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GAPE COD

BY

HENRY D. THOREAU

Author of " A Week on the Cokcord," " Waxden '
"Excursions," "The Maine Woods," etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

CLIFTON JOHNSON

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

PUBLISHERS

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COPY 8.

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Copyright, 1908
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

OF the group of notables who in the middle of the
last century made the little Massachusetts town of
Concord their home, and who thus conferred on
it a literary fame both unique and enduring, Thoreau
is the only one who was Concord born. His neighbor,
Emerson, had sought the place in mature life for rural re-
tirement, and after it became his chosen retreat, Haw-
thorne, Alcott, and the others followed ; but Thoreau, the
most peculiar genius of them all, was native to the soil.

In 1837, at the age of twenty, he graduated from Har-
vard, and for three years taught school in his home town.
Then he applied himself to the business in which his father
was engaged, — the manufacture of lead pencils. He be-
lieved he could make a better pencil than any at that time
in use ; but when he succeeded and his friends congratu-
lated him that he had now opened his way to fortune he re-
sponded that he would never make another pencil. "Why
should I?" said he. "I would not do again what I have
done once."

So he turned his attention to miscellaneous studies and
to nature. When he wanted money he earned it by some
piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat
or a fence, planting, or surveying. He never married, very
rarely went to church, did not vote, refused to pay a tax
to the State, ate no flesh, drank no wine, used no tobacco ;
and for a long time he was simply an oddity in the estima-

vi INTRODUCTION

tion of his fellow- townsmen. But when they at length
came to understand him better tliey recognized his genu-
ineness and sincerity and his originality, and they revered
and admired him. He was entirely independent of the con-
ventional, and his courage to live as he saw fit and to de-
fend and uphold what he believed to be right never failed
him. Indeed, so devoted was he to principle and his own
ideals that he seems never to have allowed himself one in-
different or careless moment.

He was a man of the strongest local attachments, and
seldom wandered beyond his native township, A trip
abroad did not tempt him in the least. It would mean in
his estimation just so much time lost for enjoying his
own village, and he says: "At best, Paris could only be
a school in which to learn to live here — a stepping-stone
to Concord."

He had a very pronounced antipathy to the average
prosperous city man, and in speaking of persons of this
class remarks: "They do a little business commonly each
day in order to pay their board, and then they congregate
in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and paddle in the
social slush, and go unashamed to their beds and take on a
new layer of sloth."

The men he loved were those of a more primitive sort,
unartificial, with the daring to cut loose from the trammels
of fashion and inherited custom. Especially he liked the
companionship of men who were in close contact with
nature. A half -wild Irishman, or some rude farmer, or
fisherman, or hunter, gave him real delight; and for this
reason. Cape Cod appealed to him strongly. It was then a
very isolated portion of the State, and its dwellers were just
the sort of independent, self-reliant folk to attract him. In

INTRODUCTION vii

his account of his rambles there the human element has
large place, and he lingers fondly over the characteristics
of his chance acquaintances and notes every salient re-
mark. They, in turn, no doubt found him interesting, too,
though the purposes of the wanderer were a good deal of a
mystery to them, and they were inclined to think he was a
pedler.

His book was the result of several journeys, but the only
trip of which he tells us in detail was in October. That
month, therefore, was the one I chose for my own visit to
the Cape when I went to secure the series of pictures that
illustrate this edition; for I wished to see the region as
nearly as possible in the same guise that Thoreau describes
it. From Sandwich, where his record of Cape experiences
begins, and where the inner shore jBrst takes a decided turn
eastward, I followed much the same route he had travelled
in 1849, clear to Provincetown, at the very tip of the hook,

Thoreau has a good deal to say of the sandy roads and
toilsome walking. In that respect there has been marked
improvement, for latterly a large proportion of the main
highway has been macadamed. Yet one still encounters
plenty of the old yielding sand roads that make travel a
weariness either on foot or in teams. Another feature to
which the nature lover again and again refers is the wind-
mills. The last of these ceased grinding a score of years
ago, though several continue to stand in fairly perfect con-
dition. There have been changes on the Cape, but the
landscape in the main presents the same appearance it did
in Thoreau's time. As to the people, if you see them in an
unconventional way, tramping as Thoreau did, their indi-
viduality retains much of the interest that he discovered.

Our author's report of his trip has a piquancy that is

viii INTRODUCTION

quite alluring. This might be said of all his books, for no
matter what he wrote about, his comments were certain to
be unusual ; and it is as much or more for the revelations
of his own tastes, thoughts, and idiosyncrasies that we
read him as for the subject matter with which he deals.
He had published only two books when he died in 1862 at
the age of fort}-four, and his "Cape Cod" did not appear
until 1865. Nor did the public at first show any marked
interest in his books. During his life, therefore, the circle
of his admirers was very small, but his fame has steadily
increased since, and the stimulus of his lively descriptions
and observations seems certain of enduring appreciation.

Clifton Johnson.
Hadlet, Mass.

CONTENTS

FAOE

Introduction v

I. The Shipwreck 3

II. Stage-coach ^ Views 21

III. The Plains of Nauset 35

IV. The Beach 65

V. The Wellfleet Oysterman 91

VI. The Beach Again 117

"*^II. Across the Cape 149

VIII. The Highland Light 174

IX. The Sea and the Desert 205

X. Provincetown 247

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Clam-Digger (Photogravui'e) Frontispiece

Cohasset — The little cove at Whitehead promontory . 12

An old windmill 24

A street in Sandwich 28

The old Higgins tavern at Orleans 32

A Nauset lane 36

Nauset Bay 40

A scarecrow 44

Millennium Grove camp-meeting grounds 52

A Cape Cod citizen 66

Wreckage under the sand-bluff . 84

Herring River at Wellfleet 90

A characteristic gable with many windows .... 92

A Wellfleet oysterman 96 '

Wellfleet . . 104

Hunting for a leak 114'

Truro — Starting on a voyage 120

Unloading the day's catch 136

A Truro footpath 1 50

Truro meeting-house on the hill 154

A herd of cows 158

Pond Village l64

Dragging a dory up on the beach 174

xii ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

An old wrecker at home 186

The Highland Light 194

Towing along shore 210

A cranberry meadow 230

The sand dunes drifting in upon the trees .... 238

The white breakers on the Atlantic side 244

In Provincetpwn harbor 248

Provincetown — A bit of the village from the wharf . 260

The day of rest 294

A Provincetown fishing-vessel 304

CAPE COD

CAPE COD

I

THE SHIPWRECK

WISHING to get a better view than I had
yet had of the ocean, which, we are
told, covers more than two-thirds of
the globe, but of which a man who lives a few
miles inland may never see any trace, more than
of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in
October, 1849, another the succeeding June, and
another to Truro in July, 1855 ; the first and last
time with a single companion, the second time
alone. I have spent, in all, about three weeks
on the Cape ; walked from Eastham to Province-
town twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the
Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and
crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way ;
but having come so fresh to the sea, I have got
but little salted. My readers must expect only
so much saltness as the land breeze acquires
from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is tasted
on the windows and the bark of trees twenty
miles inland, after September gales. I have been
accustomed to make excursions to the ponds
within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have
extended my excursions to the seashore.

4 CAPE COD

I did not see why I mig:lit not make a book on
Cape Cod, as well as my neighbor on "Human
Culture." It is but another name for the same
thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for
my title, I suppose that the word Cape is from
the French cap; which is from the Latin caput,
a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb capere,
to take, — that being the part by which we take
hold of a thing : — Take Time bv the forelock.
It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.
And as for Cod, that was derived directlv from
that "great store of codfish" which Captain
Bartholomew Gosnold caught there in WO'-Z ;
which fish appears to have been so called from
the Saxon word coddc, "a case in which seeds
are lodged," either from the form of the fish, or
the quantity of spawn it contains ; whence also,
perhaps, codling {pomum coctilef) and coddle, —
to cook green like peas. (V. Die.) -

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of
Massachusetts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's
Bay ; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Malle-
barre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist
at Provincetown, — behind which tlie State
stands on her o-uard. with her back to the Green
Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of
the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay, —
boxincr with northeast storms, and. ever and
anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from
the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward her

THE SHIPAA^ECK 5

other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her
breast at Cape Ann.

On studying the map, I saw that there must
be an uninterrupted beach on the east or outside
of the forearm of the Cape, more than thirty
miles from the general line of the coast, which
would afford a good sea view, but that, on ac-
count of an opening in the beach, forming the
entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must
strike it in Eastham, if I approached it by land,
and probably I could walk thence straight to
Race Point, about twenty-eight miles, and not
meet with any obstruction.

We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday,
October 9th, 1849. On reaching Boston, we
found that the Provincetown steamer, which
should have got in the day before, had not yet
arrived, on account of a violent storm ; and, as
we noticed in the streets a handbill headed,
"Death! one hundred and forty-five lives lost
at Cohasset," we decided to go by way of Co-
hasset. We found many Irish in the cars, going
to identify bodies and to sympathize with the
survivors, and also to attend the funeral which
was to take place in the afternoon ; — and when
we arrived at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly
all the passengers were bound for the beach,
which was about a mile distant, and many other
persons were flocking in from the neighboring
countr}\ There were several hundreds of them

6 CAPE COD

streamins: off over Cohasset common in that di-
rection, some on foot and some in wagons, —
and among them were some sportsmen in their
hunting-jackets, with their guns, and game-bags,
and dogs. As we passed the graveyard we saw
a large hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and.
just before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly
windins: and rockv road, we met several hav-
risro'infrs and farm-wa£:ons comino; awav toward
the meetino^-house, each loaded with three laro^e,
roucrh deal boxes. ^Ye did not need to ask what
was in them. The owners of the wagons were
made the undertakers. Many horses in carriages
were fastened to the fences near the shore, and.
for a mile or more, up and down, the beach was
covered with people looking out for bodies, and
examinincr the fras-ments of the wreck. There
was a small island called Brook Island, with a
hut on it. Ivinir iust off the shore. This is said
to be the rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from
Nantasket to Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks,
which the waves have laid bare, but have not
been able to crumble. It has been the scene of
many a shipwreck.

The britr S/. John, from Galwav, Ireland, laden
with emi^rrants, was wrecked on Sundav morn-
ine; it was now Tuesdav morninsj, and the sea
was still breakins: violentlv on the rocks. There
were eighteen or twentv of the same larsje boxes
that I have mentioned, lying on a green hillside.

THE SHIPWRECK 7

a few rods from the water, and surrounded by a
crowd. The bodies which had been recovered,
twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected
there. Some were rapidly nailing down the lids,
others were carting the boxes away, and others
were lifting the lids, which were yet loose, and
peeping under the cloths, for each body, with
such rags as still adhered to it, was covered
loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no sig-ns
of grief, but there was a sober despatch of busi-
ness which was affecting. One man was seeking
to identify a particular body, and one undertaker
or carpenter was calling to another to know in
what box a certain child was put. I saw many
marble feet and matted heads as the cloths were
raised, and one livid, swollen, and mangled body
of a drowned girl, — who probably had intended
to go out to service in some American family, —
to which some rags still adhered, with a string,
half concealed by the flesh, about its swollen
neck; the coiled-up wreck of a human hulk,
gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the bone
and muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless, —
merely red and white, — with wide-open and
staring eyes, yet lustreless, dead-lights; or like
the cabin windows of a stranded vessel, filled
with sand. Sometimes there were two or more
children, or a parent and child, in the same box,
and on the lid would perhaps be written with red
chalk, "Bridget such-a-one, and sister's child."

8 CAPE COD

The surrounding sward was covered with bits of
sails and clothing. I have since heard, from one
who lives by this beach, that a woman who had
come over before, but had left her infant behind
for her sister to bring, came and looked into
these boxes and saw in one, — probably the
same whose superscription I have quoted, — her
child in her sister's arms, as if the sister had
meant to be found thus ; and within three days
after, the mother died from the effect of that
sight.

We turned from this and walked along the
rocky shore. In the first cove were strewn what
seemed the fragments of a vessel, in small pieces
mixed with sand and sea- weed, and great quan-
tities of feathers ; but it looked so old and rusty,
that I at first took it to be some old wreck which
had lain there many years. I even thought of
Captain Kidd, and that the feathers were those
which sea-fowl had cast there ; and perhaps there
might be some tradition about it in the neigh-
borhood. I asked a sailor if that was the St. John.
He said it was. I asked him where she struck.
He pointed to a rock in front of us, a mile from
the shore, called the Grampus Rock, and added :

"You can see a part of her now sticking up;
it looks like a small boat."

I saw it. It was thought to be held by the
chain-cables and the anchors. I asked if the
bodies which I saw were all that were drowned.

THE SHIPWRECK 9

"Not a quarter of them," said he.

"Where are the rest?"

"Most of them right underneath that piece
you see."

It appeared to us that there was enough rub-
bish to make the wreck of a large vessel in this
cove alone, and that it would take many days to
cart it off. It was several feet deep, and here and
there was a bonnet or a jacket on it. In the very
midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were
men with carts busily collecting the sea-weed
which the storm had cast up, and conveying it
beyond the reach of the tide, though they were
often obliged to separate fragments of clothing
from it, and they might at any moment have
found a human body under it. Drown who
might, they did not forget that this weed was a
valuable manure. This shipwreck had not pro-
duced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.

About a mile south we could see, rising above
the rocks, the masts of the British brig which
the St. John had endeavored to follow, which
had slipped her cables and, by good luck, run
into the mouth of Cohasset Harbor. A little
further along the shore we saw a man's clothes
on a rock; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a
straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her
masts high and dry, broken into several pieces.
In another rocky cove, several rods from the
water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a

10 CAPE COD

part of one side of the vessel, still hanging to-
gether. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by four-
teen wide. I was even more surprised at the
power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered
fragment, than I had been at the sight of the
smaller fragments before. The largest timbers
and iron braces were broken superfluously, and
I saw that no material could withstand the power
of the waves ; that iron must go to pieces in such
a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up
like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of these
timbers, however, were so rotten that I could
almost thrust my umbrella through them. They
told us that some were saved on this piece, and
also showed where the sea had heaved it into
this cove, which was now dry. When I saw
where it had come in, and in what condition, I
wondered that any had been saved on it. A
little further on a crowd of men was ^collected
around the mate of the *S^. John, who was telling
his story. He was a slim-looking youth, who
spoke of the captain as the master, and seemed
a little excited. He was saying that when they
jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the vessel
lurching, the weight of the water in the boat
caused the painter to break, and so they
were separated. Whereat one man came away,
saying : —

'*Well, I don't see but he tells a straight story
enough. You see, the weight of the water in the

THE SHIPWRECK 11

boat broke the painter. A boat full of water is
very heavy," — and so on, in a loud and im-
pertinently earnest tone, as if he had a bet de-
pending on it, but had no humane interest in
the matter.

Another, a large man, stood near by upon a
rock, gazing into the sea, and chewing large
quids of tobacco, as if that habit were forever
confirmed with him.

"Come," says another to his companion,
"let's be off. We 've seen the whole of it. It's
no use to stay to the funeral."

Further, we saw one standing upon a rock,
who, we were told, was one that was saved. He
was a sober-looking man, dressed in a jacket
and gray pantaloons, with his hands in the
pockets. I asked him a few questions, which
he answered; but he seemed unwilling to talk
about it, and soon walked away. By his side
stood one of the life-boatmen, in an oil-cloth
jacket, who told us how they went to the relief
of the British brig, thinking that the boat of the
St. John, which they passed on the way, held all
her crew, — for the waves prevented their seeing
those who were on the vessel, though they might
have saved some had they known there were
any there. A little further was the flag of the
St. John spread on a rock to dry, and held down
by stones at the corners. This frail, but essen-
tial and significant portion of the vessel, which

12 CAPE COD

had so long been the sport of the winds, was sure
to reach the shore. There were one or two
houses visible from these rocks, in which were
some of the survivors recovering from the shock
which their bodies and minds had sustained.
One was not expected to live.

We kept on down the shore as far as a prom-
ontory called Whitehead, that we might see more
of the Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove, within
half a mile, there were an old man and his son
collecting, with their team, the sea- weed which
that fatal storm had cast up, as serenely em-
ployed as if there had never been a wreck in the
world, though they were within sight of the
Grampus Rock, on which the St. John had
struck. The old man had heard that there was
a wreck, and knew most of the particulars, but
he said that he had not been up there since it
happened. It was the wrecked weed that con-
cerned him most, rock-weed, kelp, and sea-
weed, as he named them, which he carted to his
barn-yard; and those bodies were to him but
other weeds which the tide cast up, but which
were of no use to him. We afterwards came to
the life-boat in its harbor, waiting for another
emergency, — and in the afternoon we saw the
funeral procession at a distance, at the head
of which walked the captain with the other
survivors.

On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene

s:

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■V,

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c3

THE SHIPWRECK 13

as I might have expected. If I had found one
body cast upon the beach in some lonely place,
it would have affected me more. I sympathized
rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss
and mangle these poor human bodies was the
order of the day. If this was the law of Nature,
why waste any time in awe or pity ? If the last
day were come, we should not think so much
about the separation of friends or the blighted
prospects of individuals. I saw that corpses
might be multiplied, as on the field of battle, till
they no longer affected us in any degree, as ex-
ceptions to the common lot of humanity. Take
all the graveyards together, they are always the
majority. It is the individual and private that
demands our sympathy. A man can attend but
one funeral in the course of his life, can behold
but one corpse. Yet I saw that the inhabitants
of the shore would be not a little affected by this
event. They would watch there many days and
nights for the sea to give up its dead, and their
imaginations and sympathies would supply the
place of mourners far away, who as yet knew not
of the wreck. Many days after this, something
white was seen floating on the water by one who
was sauntering on the beach. It was approached
in a boat, and found to be the body of a woman,
which had risen in an upright position, whose
white cap was blown back with the wind. I saw
that the beauty of the shore itself was wrecked

14 CAPE COD

for many a lonely walker there, until he could
perceive, at last, how its beauty was enhanced
by wrecks like this, and it acquired thus a rarer
and sublimer beauty still.

Why care for these dead bodies ? They really
have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their
owners were coming to the New World, as
Columbus and the Pilgrims did, — they were
within a mile of its shores ; but, before they could
reach it, they emigrated to a newer world than
ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of whose ex-
istence we believe that there is far more univer-
sal and convincing evidence — though it has not
yet been discovered by science — than Colum-
bus had of this; not merely mariners' tales and
some paltry drift-wood and sea- weed, but a con-
tinual drift and instinct to all our shores. I saw
their empty hulks that came to land; but they
themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some
shore yet further west, toward which we are all
tending, and which we shall reach at last, it may
be through storm and darkness, as they did.
No doubt, we have reason to thank God that
they have not been "shipwrecked into life
ajrain." The mariner who makes the safest
port in Heaven, perchance, seems to his friends
on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Bos-
ton Harbor the better place; though perhaps
invisible to them, a skilful pilot comes to meet
him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow off

THE SHIPWRECK 15

that coast, his good ship makes the land in hal-
cyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture
there, while his old hulk tosses in the surf here.
It is hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt,
it is easy enough to do without it when once it is
gone. All their plans and hopes burst like a
bubble ! Infants by the score dashed on the
rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, no !
If the St. John did not make her port here, she
has been telegraphed there. The strongest wind
cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath.
A just man's purpose cannot be split on any
Grampus or material rock, but itself will split
rocks till it succeeds.

The verses addressed to Columbus, dying,
may, with slight alterations, be applied to the
passengers of the St. John : —

"Soon with them will all be over.
Soon the voyage will be begun
That shall bear them to discover.
Far away, a land unknown.

"Land that each, alone, must visit.
But no tidings bring to men;
For no sailor, once departed,
Ever hath returned again.

"No carved wood, no broken branches.
Ever drift from that far wild;
He who on that ocean launches
Meets no corse of angel child.

16 CAPE COD

"Undismayed, my noble sailors,
Spread, then spread your canvas out;
Spirits ! on a sea of ether
Soon shall ye serenely float !

"Where the deep no plummet soundeth.
Fear no hidden breakers there,
And the fanning wing of angels
Shall your bark right onward bear.

"Quit, now, full of heart and comfort,
These rude shores, they are of earth;
Where the rosy clouds are parting,
There the blessed isles loom forth."

One summer day, since this, I came this way,
on foot, along the shore from Boston. It was so
warm that some horses had cHmbed to the very
top of the ramparts of the old fort at Hull,
where there was hardly room to turn round, for
the sake of the breeze. The Datura stramonium,
or thorn-apple, was in full bloom 9,long the
beach ; and, at sight of this cosmopolite, —
this Captain Cook among plants, — carried in
ballast all over the world, I felt as if I were on
the highway of nations. Say, rather, this Viking,
king of the Bays, for it is not an innocent plant ;
it suggests not merely commerce, but its attend-
ant vices, as if its fibres were the stuff of which
pirates spin their yarns. I heard the voices of
men shouting aboard a vessel, half a mile from
the shore, which sounded as if they were in a
barn in the country, they being between the

THE SHIPWRECK 17

sails. It was a purely rural sound. As I looked
over the water, I saw the isles rapidly wasting
away, the sea nibbling voraciously at the con-
tinent, the springing arch of a hill suddenly
interrupted, as at Point Alderton, — what bot-
anists might call premorse, — showing, by its
curve against the sky, how much space it must
have occupied, where now was water only, On
the other hand, these wrecks of isles were being
fancifully arranged into new shores, as at Hog
Island, inside of Hull, where everything seemed
to be gently lapsing, into futurity. This isle had
got the very form of a ripple, — and I thought
that the inhabitants should bear a ripple for
device on their shields, a wave passing over
them, with the datura, which is said to produce
mental alienation of long duration without affect-
ing the bodily health,^ springing from its edge.

' The Jamestown weed (or thorn-apple). "This, being an
early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some
of the soldiers sent thither [i. e. to Virginia] to quell the rebellion of
Bacon ; and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which
was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon
it for several days : one would blow up a feather in the air ; an-
other would dart straws at it with much fury ; and another, stark
naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and
making mows at them ; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his
companions, and sneer in their faces, with a countenance more
antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic condition they
were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves,
— though it was observed that all their actions were full of in-
nocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly.

2

18 CAPE COD

The most interesting thing which I heard of, in
this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring,
whose locality was pointed out to me, on the
side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the
shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I
should go through Rome, it would be some
spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember
the longest. It is true, I was somewhat inter-
ested in the well at the old French fort, which
was said to be ninety feet deep, with a cannon at
the bottom of it. On Nantasket beach I counted
a dozen chaises from the public-house. From
time to time the riders turned their horses toward
the sea, standing in the water for the coolness, —
and I saw the value of beaches to cities for the
sea breeze and the bath.

At Jerusalem village the inhabitants were col-
lecting in haste, before a thunder-shower now
approaching, the Irish moss which they had
spread to dry. The shower passed on one side,
and gave me a few drops only, which did not
cool the air. I merely felt a puff upon my cheek,
though, within sight, a vessel was capsized in the
bay, and several others dragged their anchors,
and were near going ashore. The sea-bathing
at Cohasset Rocks was perfect. The water was
purer and more transparent than any I had ever

A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days
returned to themselves again, not remembering anything that had
passed." — Beverly's History of Virginia, p. 120.

THE SHIPWRECK 19

seen. There was not a particle of mud or slime
about it. The bottom being sandy, I could see
the sea-perch swimming about. The smooth
and fantastically worn rocks, and the perfectly
clean and tress-like rock-weeds falling over you,
and attached so firmly to the rocks that you
could pull yourself up by them, greatly enhanced
the luxury of the bath. The stripe of barnacles
just above the weeds reminded me of some
vegetable growth, — the buds, and petals, and
seed-vessels of flowers. They lay along the
seams of the rock like buttons on a waistcoat.
It was one of the hottest days in the year, yet I
found the water so icy cold that I could swim
but a stroke or two, and thought that, in case of
shipwreck, there would be more danger of being
chilled to death than simply drowned. One
immersion was enough to make you forget the
dog-days utterly. Though you were sweltering
before, it will take you half an hour now to re-
member that it was ever warm. There were the
tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the
ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against
and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.
The water held in their little hollows, on the
receding of the tide, was so crystalline that I
could not believe it salt, but wished to drink it;
and higher up were basins of fresh water left
by the rain, — all which, being also of different
depths and temperature, were convenient for

20 CAPE COD

different kinds of baths. Also, the larger hollows
in the smoothed rocks formed the most conven-
ient of seats and dressing-rooms. In these re-
spects it was the most perfect seashore that I
had seen.

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only
by a narrow beach, a handsome but shallow lake
of some four hundred acres, which, I was told,
the sea had tossed over the beach in a great
storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had
piissed into it, it had stopped up its outlet, and
now the alewives were dvino: bv thousands, and
the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence
as the water evaporated. It had live rocky islets
in it.

This rockv shore is called Pleasant Cove, on
some maps ; on the map of Cohasset, that name
appears to be confined to the particular cove
where I saw the wreck of the St. J aim. The
ocean did not look, now, as if anv were ever
shipwrecked in it; it was not grand and sub-
lime, but beautiful as a lake. Not a vestiae of
a wreck wa^ visible, nor could I believe that the
bones of many a shipwrecked man were buried
in that pure sand. But to go on with our first
excursion.

n

STAGE-COACH VIEWS

A FTER spending the night in Bridgewater,
A\ and picking up a few arrow-heads there in
the morning, we took the cars for Sandwich,
where we arrived before noon. This was the
terminus of the "Cape Cod Railroad," though
it is but the beginning of the Cape. As it rained
hard, with driving mists, and there was no sign
of its holding up, we here took that almost obso-
lete conveyance, the stage, for "as far as it went
that day," as we told the driver. We had for-
gotten how far a stage could go in a day, but we
were told that the Cape roads were very "heavy,"
though they added that, being of sand, the rain
would improve them. This coach was an ex-
ceedingly narrow one, but as there was a slight
spherical excess over two on a seat, the driver
waited till nine passengers had got in, without
taking the measure of any of them, and then
shut the door after two or three ineffectual slams,
as if the fault were all in the hinges or the latch,
— while we timed our inspirations and expira-
tions so as to assist him.

We were now^ fairly on the Cape, which ex-
tends from Sandwich eastward thirty-five miles,

22 CAPE COD

and thence north and northwest thirty more, in
all sixty-five, and has an average breadth of
about five miles. In the interior it rises to the
height of two hundred, and sometimes perhaps
three hundred feet above the level of the sea.
According to Hitchcock, the geologist of the
State, it is composed almost entirely of sand,
even to the depth of three hundred feet in some
places, though there is probably a concealed core
of rock a little beneath the surface, and it is of
diluvian origin, excepting a small portion at the
extremity and elsewhere along the shores, which
is alluvial. For the first half of the Cape large
blocks of stone are found, here and there, mixed
with the sand, but for the last thirty miles
boulders, or even gravel, are rarely met with.
Hitchcock conjectures that the ocean has, in
course of time, eaten out Boston , Harbor and
other bays in the mainland, and that the minute
fragments have been deposited by the currents
at a distance from the shore, and formed this
sand-bank. Above the sand, if the surface is
subjected to agricultural tests, there is found to
be a thin layer of soil gradually diminishing from
Barnstable to Truro, where it ceases ; but there
are many holes and rents in this weather-beaten
garment not likely to be stitched in time, which
reveal the naked flesh of the Cape, and its ex-
tremity is completely bare.

I at once got out my book, the eighth volume

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 23

of the Collections of the Massachusetts Histori-
cal Society, printed in 1802, which contains some
short notices of the Cape towns, and began to
read up to where I was, for in the cars I could
not read as fast as I travelled. To those who
came from the side of Plymouth, it said : "After
riding through a body of woods, twelve miles
in extent, interspersed with but few houses, the
settlement of Sandwich appears, with a more
agreeable effect, to the eye of the traveller."
Another writer speaks of this as a beautiful vil-
lage. But I think that our villages will bear to
be contrasted only with one another, not with
Nature. I have no great respect for the writer's
taste, who talks easily about beautiful villages,
embellished, perchance, with a "fulling-mill,"
"a handsome academy," or meeting-house, and
"a number of shops for the different mechanic
arts"; where the green and white houses of the
gentry, drawn up in rows, front on a street of
which it would be difficult to tell whether it is
most like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such
spots can be beautiful only to the weary trav-
eller, or the returning native, — or, perchance,
the repentant misanthrope; not to him who,
with unprejudiced senses, has just come out of
the woods, and approaches one of them, by a
bare road, through a succession of straggling
homesteads where he cannot tell which is the
alms-house. However, as for Sandwich, I can-

^4 CAPE COD

not speak particularly. Ours was but half a
Sandwich at most, and that must have fallen on
the buttered side some time. I onlv saw that it
was a closely built town for a small one. with

ft

glass-works to improve its sand, and narrow
streets in which we turned round and round till
we could not tell which wav we were i^oiuix, and

ft C* vT*

the rain came in. first on this side, and then on
that, and I saw that thev in the houses were more

ft

comfortable than we in the coach, ^[v book also

ft

said of this town, "The inhabitants, in oreneral.
are substantial livers." — that is. I suppose, they
do not live like philosophers: but. as the stage
did not stop long enough for us to dine, we had
no ©pportunity to test the truth of this statement.
It mav have referred, however, to the quantity

• I ft

"of oil they would yield." It further said, "The

ft •

inhabitants of Sandwich jjenerallv manifest a
fond and steady adherence to the m:mners. em-

ft

plovments, and modes of liviuir which charac-

I ft O

terized their fathers"; which made me think
that thev were, after all, very much like all the

ft ft

rest of the world ; — and it added that this was
"a resemblance, which, at this day, will consti-
tute no impeachment of either their virtue or
taste": which remark proves to me that the
writer was one with the rest of them. No people
ever lived bv cursin^: their fathers, however irreat

ft V* r^

a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Hut it must be confessed that ours was old au-

Jn old windmill

II

I

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 25

thority, and probably they have changed all that
now.

Our route was along the Bay side, through
Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, and Brewster,
to Orleans, with a range of low hills on our right,
running down the Cape. The weather was not
favorable for wayside views, but we made the
most of such glimpses of land and water as we
could get through the rain. The country was,
for the most part, bare, or with only a little
scrubby wood left on the hills. We noticed in
Yarmouth ' — and, if I do not mistake, in Dennis
— large tracts where pitch-pines were planted
four or five years before. They were in rows, as
they appeared when we were abreast of them,
and, excepting that there were extensive vacant
spaces, seemed to be doing remarkably well.
This, we were told, was the only use to which
such tracts could be profitably put. Every
higher eminence had a pole set up on it, with an
old storm-coat or sail tied to it, for a signal, that
those on the south side of the Cape, for instance,
might know when the Boston packets had ar-
rived on the>north. It appeared as if this use
must absorb the greater part of the old clothes
of the Cape, leaving but few rags for the pedlers.
The wind-mills on the hills, — large weather-
stained octagonal structures, — and the salt-
works scattered all along the shore, with their
long rows of vats resting on piles driven into the

26 CAPE COD

marsh, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their
slighter wind-mills, were novel and interesting
objects to an inlander. The sand by the road-
side was partially covered with bunches of a
moss-like plant, Hudsonia tomentosa, which a
woman in the stage told us was called "poverty-
grass," because it grew where nothing else
would.

I was struck by the pleasant equality which
reigned among the stage company, and their
broad and invulnerable good-humor. They were
what is called free and easy, and met one another
to advantage, as men who had at length learned
how to live. They appeared to know each other
when they were strangers, they were so simple
and downright. They were well met, in an un-
usual sense, that is, they met as well as they could
meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any
impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed
of one another, but were contented to make just
such a company as the ingredients allowed. It
was evident that the same foolish respect was
not here claimed for mere wealth and station
that is in many parts of New England ; yet some
of them were the *' first people," as they are
called, of the various towns through which we
passed. Retired sea-captains, in easy circum-
stances, who talked of farming as sea-captains
are wont ; an erect, respectable, and trustworthy-
looking man, in his wrapper, some of the salt of

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 27

the earth, who had formerly been the salt of the
sea ; or a more courtly gentleman, who, per-
chance, had been a representative to the General
Court in his day; or a broad, red-faced Cape
Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be
easily irritated ; or a fisherman's wife, who had
been waiting a week for a coaster to leave Boston,
and had at length come by the cars.

A strict regard for truth obliges us to say that
the few women whom we saw that day looked
exceedingly pinched up. They had prominent
chins and noses, having lost all their teeth, and
a sharp W would represent their profile. They
were not so well preserved as their husbands ; or
perchance they were well preserved as dried
specimens. (Their husbands, however, were
pickled.) But we respect them not the less for
all that; our own dental system is far from
perfect.

Still we kept on in the rain, or, if we stopped,
it was commonly at a post-office, and we thought
that writing letters, and sorting them against our
arrival, must be the principal employment of the
inhabitants of the Cape this rainy day. The
post-office appeared a singularly domestic insti-
tution here. Ever and anon the stage stopped
before some low shop or dwelling, and a wheel-
wright or shoemaker appeared in his shirt sleeves
and leather apron, with spectacles newly donned,
holding up Uncle Sam's bag, as if it were a slice

28 CAPE COD

of home-made cake, for the travellers, while he
retailed some piece of gossip to the driver, really
as indifferent to the presence of the former as if
they were so much baggage. In one instance
we understood that a woman was the post-
mistress, and they said that she made the best
one on the road ; but we suspected that the letters
must be subjected to a very close scrutiny there.
While we were stopping for this purpose at
Dennis, we ventured to put our heads out of
the windows, to see where we were going, and
saw rising before us, through the mist, singular
barren hills, all stricken with poverty-grass,
looming up as if they were in the horizon, though
they were close to us, and we seemed to have
got to the end of the land on that side, notwith-
standing that the horses were still headed that
way. Indeed, that part of Dennis which we saw
was an exceedingly barren and desolate country,
of a character which I can find no name for;
such a surface, perhaps, as the bottom of the
sea made dry land day before yesterday. It was
covered with poverty-grass, and there was hardly
a tree in sight, but here and there a little weather-
stained, one-storied house, with a red roof, —
for often the roof was painted, though the rest
of the house was not, — standing bleak and
cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the
land, where the comfort must have been all
inside. Yet we read in the Gazetteer — for we

A street in Sandwich

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 29

carried that too with us — that, in 1837, one
hundred and fifty masters of vessels, belonging
to this town, sailed from the various ports of the
Union. There must be many more houses in
the south part of the town, else we cannot imagine
where they all lodge when they are at home, if
ever they are there ; but the truth is, their houses
are floating ones, and their home is on the ocean.
There were almost no trees at all in this part of
Dennis, nor could I learn that they talked of
setting out any. It is true, there was a meeting-
house, set round with Lombardy poplars, in a
hollow square, the rows fully as straight as the
studs of a building, and the corners as square;
but, if I do not mistake, every one of them was
dead. I could not help thinking that they needed
a revival here. Our book said that, in 1795, there
was erected in Dennis "an elegant meeting-house,
with a steeple." Perhaps this was the one;
though whether it had a steeple, or had died
down so far from sympathy with the poplars, I
do not remember. Another meeting-house in
this town was described as a "neat building";
but of the meeting-house in Chatham, a neigh-
boring town, for there was then but one, nothing
is said, except that it "is in good repair," — both
which remarks, I trust, may be understood as
applying to the churches spiritual as well as
material. However, "elegant meeting-houses,"
from that Trinity one on Broadway, to this at

30 CAPE COD

Nobscusset, in my estimation, belong to the
same category with "beautiful villages." I was
never in season to see one. Handsome is that
handsome does. What they did for shade here,
in warm weather, we did not know, though we
read that "fogs are more frequent in Chatham
than in any other part of the country ; and they
serve in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the
houses against the heat of the sun. To those
who delight in extensive vision," — is it to be
inferred that the inhabitants of Chatham do not ?
— "they are unpleasant, but they are not found
to be unhealthful." Probably, also, the unob-
structed sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan.
The historian of Chatham says further, that "in
many families there is no difference between the
breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies
being as common at the one as at the other."
But that leaves us still uncertain whether they
were really common at either.

The road, which was quite hilly, here ran near
the Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side, and
"the rough hill of Scargo," said to be the highest
land on the Cape, on the other. Of the wide
prospect of the Bay afforded by the summit of
this hill, our guide says: "The view has not
much of the beautiful in it, but it communicates
a strong emotion of the sublime." That is the
kind of communication which we love to have
made to us. We passed through the village of

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 31

Suet, in Dennis, on Suet and Quivet Necks, of
which it is said, "when compared with Nob-
scusset," — we had a misty recollection of hav-
ing passed through, or near to, the latter, — "it
may be denominated a pleasant village; but, in
comparison with the village of Sandwich, there
is little or no beauty in it." However, we liked
Dennis well, better than any town we had seen
on the Cape, it was so novel, and, in that stormy
day, so sublimely dreary.

Captain John Sears, of Suet, was the first per-
son in this country who obtained pure marine
salt by solar evaporation alone; though it had
long been made in a similar way on the coast of
France, and elsewhere. This was in the year
1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt
was scarce and dear. The Historical Collections
contain an interesting account of his experiments,
which we read when we first saw the roofs of the
salt-works. Barnstable county is the most fav-
orable locality for these works on our northern
coast, — there is so little fresh water here empty-
ing into ocean. Quite recently there were about
two millions of dollars invested in this business
here. But now the Cape is unable to compete
with the importers of salt and the manufacturers
of it at the West, and, accordingly, her salt-works
are fast going to decay. From making salt, they
turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer
will uniformly tell you, under the head of each

32 CAPE COD

town, how many go a-fishing, and the value of
the fish and oil taken, how much salt is made
and used, how many are engaged in the coast-
ing trade, how many in manufacturing palm-
leaf hats, leather, boots, shoes, and tinware, and
then it has done, and leaves you to imagine the
more truly domestic manufactures which are
nearly the same all the world over.

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brew-
ster, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he
would be forgotten else. Who has not heard of
Elder Brewster? Who knows who he was?
This appeared to be the modern-built town of
the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea-
captains. It is said that "there are more mas-
ters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign
voyages belonging to this place than to any other
town in the country." There were many of the
modern American houses here, such as they turn
out at Cambridgeport, standing on the sand;
you could almost swear that they had been floated
down Charles River, and drifted across the Bay.
I call them American, because they are paid for
by Americans, and "put up" by American car-
penters ; but they are little removed from lumber ;
only Eastern stuff disguised with white paint, the
least interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Per-
haps we have reason to be proud of our naval
architecture, and need not go to the Greeks, or
the Goths, or the Italians, for the models of our

s

o

R

.^0

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 33

vessels. Sea-captains do not employ a Cam-
bridgeport carpenter to build their floating
houses, and for their houses on shore, if they
must copy any, it would be more agreeable to
the imagination to see one of their vessels turned
bottom upward, in the Numidian fashion. We
read that, "at certain seasons, the reflection of
the sun upon the windows of the houses in Well-
fleet and Truro (across the inner side of the elbow
of the Cape) is discernible with the naked eye,
at a distance of eighteen miles and upward, on
the county road." This we were pleased to im-
agine, as we had not seen the sun for twenty-
four hours.

The same author (the Rev. John Simpkins)
said of the inhabitants, a good while ago: **No
persons appear to have a greater relish for the
social circle and domestic pleasures. They are
not in the habit of frequenting taverns, unless on
public occasions. I know not of a proper idler
or tavern-haunter in the place." This is more
than can be said of my townsmen.

At length we stopped for the night at Higgins's
tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we
were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not know-
ing whether we should see land or water ahead
when the mist cleared away. We here overtook
two Italian boys, who had waded thus far down
the Cape through the sand, with their organs on
their backs, and were going on to Provincetown.

3

S4 CAPE COD

What a hard lot, we thought, if the Province-
town people should shut their doors against
them ! Whose yard would they go to next ?
Yet we concluded that they had chosen wisely
to come here, where other music than that of the
surf must be rare. Thus the great civilizer sends
out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy
cape and light-house of the New World which
the census-taker visits, and summons the savage
there to surrender.

Ill

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET

THE next morning, Thursday, October 11th,
it rained, as hard as ever; but we were
determined to proceed on foot, neverthe-
less. We first made some inquiries with regard
to the practicabiHty of walking up the shore on
the Atlantic side to Provincetown, whether we
should meet with any creeks or marshes to
trouble us. Higgins said that there was no ob-
struction, and that it was not much farther than
by the road, but he thought that we should find
it very "heavy" walking in the sand; it was bad
enough in the road, a horse would sink in up to
the fetlocks there. But there was one man at
the tavern who had walked it, and he said that
we could go very well, though it was sometimes
inconvenient and even dangerous walking under
the bank, when there was a great tide, with an
easterly wind, which caused the sand to cave.
For the first four or five miles we followed the
road, which here turns to the north on the elbow,
— the narrowest part of the Cape, — that we
might clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of
Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We
found the travelling good enough for walkers on

36 CAPE COD

the sides of the roads, though it was "hea\'}'"
for horses in the middle. We walked with our
umbrellas behind us, since it blowed hard as well
as rained, with driving mists, as the day before,
and the wind helped us over the sand at a rapid
rate. Evervthins: indicated that we had reached
a strange shore. The road was a mere lane, wind-
ing over bare swells of bleak and barren-looking
land. The houses were few and far between,
besides being small and rusty, though they ap-
peared to be kept in good repair, and their door-
yards, which were the unfenced Cape, were
tidy; or, rather, they looked as if the ground
around them was blown clean bv the wind. Per-
haps the scarcity of wood here, and the conse-
quent absence of the wood-pile and other wooden
traps, had something to do with this appearance.
Thev seemed, like mariners ashore, to have sat
right down to enjoy the firmness of the land,
without studying their postures or habiliments.
To them it was merely terra firma and cognita,
not yet jertilis and jucunda. Every landscape
which is drear}' enough has a certain beauty to
my eyes, and in this instance its permanent
qualities were enhanced by the weather. Eveiy-
thing told of the sea, even when we did not see
its waste or hear its roar. For birds there were
gulls, and for carts in the fields, boats turned
bottom upward against the houses, and some-
times the rib of a whale was woven into the

A Nauset lane

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 37

fence by the road-side. The trees were, if pos-
sible, rarer than the houses, excepting apple-
trees, of which there were a few small orchards
in the hollows. These were either narrow and
high, with flat tops, having lost their side
branches, like huge plum-bushes growing in ex-
posed situations, or else dwarfed and branching
immediately at the ground, like quince-bushes.
They suggested that, under like circumstances,
all trees would at last acquire like habits of
growth. I afterward saw on the Cape many
full-grown apple-trees not higher than a man's
head; one whole orchard, indeed, where all
the fruit could have been gathered by a man
standing on the ground; but you could hardly
creep beneath the trees. Some, which the own-
ers told me were twenty years old, were only
three and a half feet high, spreading at six inches
from the ground five feet each way, and being
withal surrounded with boxes of tar to catch
the cankerworms, they looked like plants in
flower-pots, and as if they might be taken into
the house in the winter. In another place, I saw
some not much larger than currant-bushes; yet
the owner told me that they had borne a barrel
and a half of apples that fall. If they had been
placed close together, I could have cleared them
all at a jump. I measured some near the High-
land Light in Truro, which had been taken from
the shrubby woods thereabouts when young, and

38 CAPE COD

grafted. One, which had been set ten years, was
on an average eighteen inches high, and spread
nine feet with a flat top. It had borne one bushel
of apples two years before. Another, probably
twenty years old from the seed, was five feet high,
and spread eighteen feet, branching, as usual, at
the ground, so that you could not creep under it.
This bore a barrel of apples two years before.
The owner of these trees invariably used the
personal pronoun in speaking of them; as, 'T
got him out of the woods, but he does n't bear."
The largest that I saw in that neighborhood was
nine feet high to the topmost leaf, and spread
thirty-three feet, branching at the ground five
ways.

In one yard I observed a single, very healthy-
looking tree, while all the rest were dead or
dying. The occupant said that his father had
manured all but that one with blackfish.'

This habit of growth should, no doubt, be
encouraged; and they should not be trimmed
up, as some travelling practitioners have ad-
vised. In 1802 there was not a single fruit-tree in
Chatham, the next town to Orleans, on the
south ; and the old account of Orleans says :
*' Fruit-trees cannot be made to grow within a
mile of the ocean. Even those which are placed
at a greater distance are injured by the east
winds; and, after violent storms in the spring,
a saltish taste is perceptible on their bark." We

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 39

noticed that they were often covered with a yel-
low lichen- like rust, the Parmelia parietina.

The most foreign and picturesque structures
on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the
salt-works, are the wind-mills, — gray-looking
octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to
the ground in the rear, and there resting on a
cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round
to face the wind. These appeared also to serve
in some measure for props against its force. A
great circular rut was worn around the building
by the wheel. The neighbors who assemble to
turn the mill to the wind are likely to know which
way it blows, without a weathercock. They
looked loose and slightly locomotive, like huge
wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and re-
minded one of pictures of the Netherlands.
Being on elevated ground, and high in them-
selves, they serve as landmarks, — for there are
no tall trees, or other objects commonly, which
can be seen at a distance in the horizon ; though
the outline of the land itself is so firm and dis-
tinct that an insignificant cone, or even precipice
of sand, is visible at a great distance from over
the sea. Sailors making the land commonly
steer either by the wind-mills or the meeting-
houses. In the country, we are obliged to steer
by the meeting-houses alone. Yet the meeting-
house is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day
in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine

40 CAPE COD

or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of
Heaven, where another sort of grist is ground, of
which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not
plaster, we trust to make bread of life.

There were, here and there, heaps of shells in
the fields, where clams had been opened for bait ;
for Orleans is famous for its shell-fish, especially
clams, or, as our author says, "to speak more
properly, worms." The shores are more fertile
than the dry land. The inhabitants measure
their crops, not only by bushels of corn, but by
barrels of clams. A thousand barrels of clam-
bait are counted as equal in value to six or eight
thousand bushels of Indian corn, and once they
were procured without more labor or expense,
and the supply was thought to be inexhaustible.
"For," runs the history, "after a portion of the
shore has been dug over, and almost all the clams
taken up, at the end of two years, it is said, they
are as plenty there as ever. It is even affirmed
by many persons, that it is as necessary to stir
the clam ground frequently as it is to hoe a field
of potatoes ; because, if this labor is omitted, the
clams will be crowded too closely together, and
will be prevented from increasing in size." But
we were told that the small clam, Mya arenaria,
was not so plenty here as formerly. Probably
the clam ground has been stirred too frequently,
after all. Nevertheless, one man, who com-
plained that they fed pigs with them and so

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 41

made them scarce, told me that he dug and
opened one hundred and twenty-six dollars'
worth in one winter, in Truro.

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen
rods long, between Orleans and Eastham, called
Jeremiah's Gutter. The Atlantic is said some-
times to meet the Bay here, and isolate the
northern part of the Cape. The stream^ of the
Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale,
since there is no room for them to run, without
tumbling immediately into the sea; and beside,
we found it difficult to run ourselves in that sand,
when there was no want of room. Hence, the
least channel where water runs, or may run, is
important, and is dignified with a name. We
read that there is no running water in Chatham,
which is the next town. The barren aspect of
the land would hardly be believed if described.
It was such soil, or rather land, as, to judge from
appearances, no farmer in the interior would
think of cultivating, or even fencing. Generally,
the ploughed fields of the Cape look white and
yellow, like a mixture of salt and Indian meal.
This is called soil. All an inlander's notions of
soil and fertility will be confounded by a visit to
these parts, and he will not be able, for some
time afterward, to distinguish soil from sand.
The historian of Chatham says of a part of
that town, which has been gained from the sea :
"There is a doubtful appearance of a soil be-

42 CAPE COD

ginning to be formed. It is styled doubtful,
because it would not be observed by every eye,
and perhaps not acknowledged by many." We
thought that this would not be a bad description
of the greater part of the Cape. There is a
"beach" on the west side of Eastham, which we
crossed the next summer, half a mile wide, and
stretching across the township, containing seven-
teen hundred acres, on which there is not now a
particle of vegetable mould, though it formerly
produced wheat. All sands are here called
"beaches," whether they are waves of water or
of air that dash against them, since they com-
monly have their origin on the shore. "The
sand in some places," says the historian of East-
ham, "lodging against the beach-grass, has been
raised into hills fifty feet high, where twenty-five
years ago no hills existed. In others it has filled
up small valleys, and swamps. Where a strong-
rooted bush stood, the appearance is singular:
a mass of earth and sand adheres to it, resem-
bling a small tower. In several places, rocks,
which were formerly covered with soil, are dis-
closed, and being lashed by the sand, driven
against them by the wind, look as if they were
recently dug from a quarry."

We were surprised to hear of the great crops
of corn which are still raised in Eastham, not-
withstanding the real and apparent barrenness.
Our landlord in Orleans had told us that he

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 43

raised three or four hundred bushels of corn
annually, and also of the great number of pigs
which he fattened. In Champlain's "Voyages,"
there is a plate representing the Indian cornfields
hereabouts, with their wigwams in the midst, as
they appeared in 1605, and it was here that the
Pilgrims, to quote their own words, "bought
eight or ten hogsheads of corn and beans'' of the
Nauset Indians, in 1622, to keep themselves
from starving/ "In 1667 the town [of Eastham]
voted that every housekeeper should kill twelve
blackbirds or three crows, which did great dam-
age to the corn; and this vote was repeated for
many years." In 1695 an additional order was
passed, namely, that "every unmarried man in
the township shall kill six blackbirds, or three
crows, while he remains single ; as a penalty for
not doing it, shall not be married until he obey
this order." The blackbirds, however, still
molest the corn. I saw them at it the next sum-

* They touched after this at a place called Mattachiest, where
they got more corn ; but their shallop being cast away in a storm,
the Governor was obliged to return to Plymouth on foot, fifty
miles through the woods. According to Mourt's Relation, "he
came safely home, though weary and surbated," that is, foot-sore.
(Ital. sobattere, Lat. sub or solea battere, to bruise the soles of the
feet; v. Die. Not "from acerbatus, embittered or aggrieved," as
one commentator on this passage supposes.) This word is of
very rare occurrence, being applied only to governors and persons
of like description, who are in that predicament; though such
generally have considerable mileage allowed them, and might
save their soles if they cared.

44 CAPE COD

mer, and there were many scarecrows, if not
scare-blackbirds, in the fields, which I often mis-
took for men. From which I concluded that
either many men were not married, or many
blackbirds were. Yet they put but three or four
kernels in a hill, and let fewer plants remain
than we do. In the account of Eastham, in the
"Historical Collections," printed in 1802, it is
said, that "more corn is produced than the in-
habitants consume, and about a thousand bushels
are annually sent to market. The soil being free
frorn stones, a plough passes through it speedily ;
and after the corn has come up, a small Cape
horse, somewhat larger than a goat, will, with
the assistance of two boys, easily hoe three or
four acres in a day; several farmers are accus-
tomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain
annually, and not long since one raised eight
hundred bushels on sixty acres.'' Similar ac-
counts are given to-day ; indeed, the recent
accounts are in some instances suspectable repe-
titions of the old, and I have no doubt that their
statements are as often founded on the exception
as the rule, and that by far the greater number
of acres are as barren as they appear to be. It is
sufficiently remarkable that any crops can be
raised here, and it may be owing, as others have
suggested, to the amount of moisture in the at-
mosphere, the warmth of the sand, and the
rareness of frosts. A miller, who was sharpening

A scarecrow

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 45

his stones, told me that, forty years ago, he had
been to a husking here, where five hundred
bushels were husked in one evening, and the
corn was piled six feet high or more, in the midst,
but now, fifteen or eighteen bushels to an acre
were an average yield. I never saw fields of such
puny and unpromising looking corn as in this
town. Probably the inhabitants are contented
with small crops from a great surface easily cul-
tivated. It is not always the most fertile land
that is the most profitable, and this sand may
repay cultivation, as well as the fertile bottoms
of the West. It is said, moreover, that the vege-
tables raised in the sand, without manure, are
remarkably sweet, the pumpkins especially,
though when their seed is planted in the interior
they soon degenerate. I can testify that the
vegetables here, when they succeed at all, look
remarkably green and healthy, though perhaps
it is partly by contrast with the sand. Yet the
inhabitants of the Cape towns, generally, do not
raise their own meal or pork. Their gardens are
commonly little patches, that have been redeemed
from the edges of the marshes and swamps.

All the morning we had heard the sea roar on
the eastern shore, which was several miles dis-
tant ; for it still felt the effects of the storm in
which the St. John was wrecked, — though a
school-boy, whom we overtook, hardly knew
what we meant, his ears were so used to it. He

46 CAPE COD

would have more plainly heard the same sound
in a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to
walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea
dashing against the land, heard several miles
inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before
your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for
a whole Cape ! On the whole, we were glad of
the storm, which would show us the ocean in its
angriest mood. Charles Darwin was assured
that the roar of the surf on the coast of Chiloe,
after a heavy gale, could be heard at night a
distance of "21 sea miles across a hilly and
wooded country." We conversed with the boy
we have mentioned, who might have been eight
years old, making him walk the while under the
lee of our umbrella; for we thought it as im-
portant to know what was life on the Cape to a
boy as to a man. We learned from him where the
best grapes were to be found in that neighbor-
hood. He was carrying his dinner in a pail ;
and, without any impertinent questions being
put by us, it did at length appear of what it con-
sisted. The homeliest facts are always the most
acceptable to an inquiring mind. At length,
before we got to Eastham meeting-house, we
left the road and struck across the country for
the eastern shore at Nauset Lights, — three
lights close together, two or three miles distant
from us. They were so many that they might
be distinguished from others; but this seemed

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 47

a shiftless and costly way of accomplishing that
object. We found ourselves at once on an ap-
parently boundless plain, without a tree or a
fence, or, with one or two exceptions, a house in
sight. Instead of fences, the earth was some-
times thrown up into a slight ridge. My com-
panion compared it to the rolling prairies of
Illinois. In the storm of wind and rain which
raged when we traversed it, it no doubt appeared
more vast and desolate than it really is. As there
were no hills, but only here and there a dry hol-
low in the midst of the waste, and the distant
horizon was concealed by mist, we did not know
whether it was high or low. A solitary traveller
whom we saw perambulating in the distance
loomed like a giant. He appeared to walk
slouchingly, as if held up from above by straps
under his shoulders, as much as supported by
the plain below. Men and boys would have
appeared alike at a little distance, there being no
object by which to measure them. Indeed, to
an inlander, the Cape landscape is a constant
mirage. This kind of country extended a mile
or two each way. These were the "Plains of
Nauset," once covered with wood, where in
winter the winds howl and the snow blows right
merrily in the face of the traveller. I was glad
to have got out of the towns, where I am wont to
feel unspeakably mean and disgraced, — to have
left behind me for a season the bar-rooms of

48 CAPE COD

Massachusetts, where the full-grown are not
weaned from savage and filthy habits, — still
sucking a cigar. My spirits rose in proportion
to the outward dreariness. The towns need to
be ventilated. The gods would be pleased to see
some pure flames from their altars. They are
not to be appeased with cigar-smoke.

As we thus skirted the back-side of the towns,
for we did not enter any village, till we got to
Provincetown, we read their histories under our
umbrellas, rarely meeting anybody. The old
accounts are the richest in topography, which
was what we wanted most ; and, indeed, in most
things else, for I find that the readable parts of
the modern accounts of these towns consist, in a
great measure, of quotations, acknowledged and
unacknowledged, from the older ones, without
any additional information of equal interest ; —
town histories, which at length run into a history
of the Church of that place, that being the only
story they have to tell, and conclude by quoting
the Latin epitaphs of the old pastors, having been
written in the good old days of Latin and of
Greek. They will go back to the ordination of
every minister and tell you faithfully who made
the introductory prayer, and who delivered the
sermon; who made the ordaining prayer, and
who gave the charge; who extended the right
hand of fellowship, and who pronounced the
benediction ; also how many ecclesiastical coun-

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 49

cils convened from time to time to inquire into
the orthodoxy of some minister, and the names
of all who composed them. As it will take us an
hour to get over this plain, and there is no variety
in the prospect, peculiar as it is, I will read a
little in the history of Eastham the while.

When the committee from Plymouth had pur-
chased the territory of Eastham of the Indians,
"it was demanded, who laid claim to Billings-
gate .^" which was understood to be all that part
of the Cape north of what they had purchased.
"The answer was, there was not any who owned
it. 'Then,' said the committee, 'that land is
ours.' The Indians answered, that it was."
This was a remarkable assertion and admission.
The Pilgrims appear to have regarded them-
selves as Not Any's representatives. Perhaps
this was the first instance of that quiet way of
"speaking for" a place not yet occupied, or at
least not improved as much as it may be, which
their descendants have practised, and are still
practising so extensively. Not Any seems to
have been the sole proprietor of all America be-
fore the Yankees. But history says that, when
the Pilgrims had held the lands of Billingsgate
many years, at length "appeared an Indian,
who styled himself Lieutenant Anthony," who
laid claim to them, and of him they bought them.
Who knows but a Lieutenant Anthony may be
knocking at the door of the White House some

50 CAPE COD

dav ? At anv rate, I know that if vou hold a
thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to
pay at last.

Thomas Prince, who was several times the
governor of the Plymouth colony, was the leader
of the settlement of Eastham. There was re-
cently standins:, on what was once his farm, in
this town, a pear-tree which is said to have been
brought from England, and planted there by him,
about two hundred vears as^o. It was blown
down a few months before we were there. A
late account savs that it was recentlv in a vigor-
ous state; the fruit small, but excellent; and it
yielded on an average fifteen bushels. Some ap-
propriate lines have been addressed to it, by a
INIr. Heman Doane, from which I will quote,
partly because they are the only specimen of
Cape Cod verse which I remember to have seen,
and partly because they are not bad.

"Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time.

Passed with their joys and woes, since thou, Old Tree !
Put forth thy first leaves in this foreign clime.
Transplanted from the soil beyond the sea.

« « * « 4:

[These stars represent the more clerical lines,
and also those which have deceased.]

"That exiled band long since have passed away.
And still. Old Tree I thou standest in the place
Where Prince's hand did plant thee in his day, —
An undesigned memorial of his race

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 51

And time; of those out honored fathers, when
They came from Plymouth o'er and settled here;

Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men.
Whose names their sons remember to revere.

^ si: * ^ *

"Old Time has thinned thy boughs. Old Pilgrim Tree!
And bowed thee with the weight of many years;
Yet 'mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see.
And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears."

There are some other Hues which I might
quote, if they were not tied to unworthy com-
panions by the rhyme. When one ox will lie
down, the voke bears hard on him that stands
up.

One of the first settlers of Eastham was Deacon
John Doane, who died in 1707, aged one hundred
and ten. Tradition says that he was rocked in a
cradle several of his last years. That, certainly,
was not an Achillean life. His mother must have
let him slip when she dipped him into the liquor
which was to make him invulnerable, and he
went in, heels and all. Some of the stone-bounds
to his farm which he set up are standing to-day,
with his initials cut in them.

The ecclesiastical history of this town inter-
ested us somewhat. It appears that "they very
earlv built a small meetinfj-house, twentv feet
square, with a thatched roof through which
thev mioht fire their muskets," — of course, at
the Devil. "In 166'2, the town agreed that a

52 CAPE COD

part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated
for the support of the ministiy." No doubt there
seemed to be some propriety in thus leaving the
support of the ministers to Providence, whose
servants they are, and who alone rules the storms ;
for, when few whales were cast up, they might
suspect that their worship was not acceptable.
The ministers must have sat upon the cliffs in
every storm, and watched the shore with anxiety.
And, for my part, if I were a minister I would
rather trust to the bowels of the billows, on the
back-side of Cape Cod, to cast up a whale for me,
than to the generosity of many a country parish
that I know. You cannot say of a country min-
ister's salary, commonly, that it is "very like a
whale." Nevertheless, the minister who de-
pended on whales cast up must have had a trying
time of it. I would rather have gone to the Falk-
land Isles with a harpoon, and done .with it.
Think of a w hale having the breath of life beaten
out of him by a storm, and dragging in over the
bars and guzzles, for the support of the ministry !
What a consolation it must have been to him !
I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisher-
man, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a
time as he could tell a cod from a haddock.
Generous as it seems, this condition would empty
most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long
since the fishers of men were fishermen. Also, a
duty was put on mackerel here to support a free-

S
I

C5

s

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 53

school ; in other words, the mackerel-school was
taxed in order that the children's school might be
free. "In 1665 the Court passed a law to inflict
corporal punishment on all persons, who resided
in the towns of this government, who denied the
Scriptures." Think of a man being whipped on
a spring morning till he was constrained to con-
fess that the Scriptures were true ! "It was also
voted by the town that all persons who should
stand out of the meeting-house during the time
of divine service should be set in the stocks." It
behooved such a town to see that sitting" in the
meeting-house was nothing akin to sitting in the
stocks, lest the penalty of obedience to the law
might be greater than that of disobedience.
This was the Eastham famous of late years for
its camp-meetings, held in a grove near by, to
which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay.
We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps
unusual, if not unhealthful, development of the
religious sentiment here was the fact that a
large portion of the population are women whose
husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea,
or else drowned, and there is nobody but they
and the ministers left behind. The old account
says that "hysteric fits are very common in
Orleans, Eastham, and the towns below, par-
ticularly on Sunday, in the times of divine service.
When one woman is affected, five or six others
generally sympathize with her; and the congre-

54 CAPE COD

gation is thrown into the utmost confusion.
Several old men suppose, unphilosophically and
uncharitably, perhaps, that the will is partly
concerned, and that ridicule and threats would
have a tendency to prevent the e\al." How this
is now we did not learn. We saw one singularlv
masculine woman, however, in a house on this
ver\' plain, who did not look as if she was ever
troubled with hysterics, or sympathized with
those that were ; or, perchance, life itself was to
her a hysteric fit, — a Nauset woman, of a hard-
ness and coarseness such as no man ever pos-
sesses or suggests. It was enough to see the
vertebrae and sinews of her neck, and her set
jaws of iron, which would have bitten a board-
nail in two in their ordinarv action, — braced
against the world, talking like a man-of-war's-
man in petticoats, or as if shouting to you through
a breaker; who looked as if it made her head
ache to live; hard enouoh for anv enormitv. I
looked upon her as one who had committed in-
fanticide; who never had a brother, unless it
were some wee thins: that died in infancy, — for
what need of him .^ — and whose father must
have died before she was born. This woman
told us that the camp-meetings were not held the
previous summer for fear of introducing the
cholera, and that they would have been held
earlier this summer, but the rve was so back-
ward that straw would not have been readv for

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 55

them; for they He in straw. There are some-
times one hundred and fifty ministers ( ! ) and
five thousand hearers assembled. The ground,
which is called Millennium Grove, is owned by
a company in Boston, and is the most suitable,
or rather unsuitable, for this purpose of any that
I saw on the Cape. It is fenced, and the frames
of the tents are at all times to be seen inter-
spersed among the oaks. They have an oven
and a pump, and keep all their kitchen utensils
and tent coverings and furniture in a permanent
building on the spot. They select a time for
their meetings when the moon is full. A man is
appointed to clear out the pump a week before-
hand, while the ministers are clearing their
throats ; but, probably, the latter do not always
deliver as pure a stream as the former. I saw
the heaps of clam-shells left under the tables,
where they had feasted in previous summers,
and supposed, of course, that that was the work
of the unconverted, or the backsliders and
scoffers. It looked as if a camp-meeting must be
a singular combination of a prayer-meeting and
a picnic.

The first minister settled here was the Rev.
Samuel Treat, in 1672, a gentleman who is said
to be "entitled to a disting-uished rank among
the evangelists of New England." He con-
verted many Indians, as well as white men, in
his day, and translated the Confession of Faith

56 CAPE COD

into the Nauset language. These were the In-
dians concerning whom their first teacher,
Richard Bourne, wrote to Gookin, in 1674, that
he had been to see one who was sick, "and there
came from him very savory and heavenly ex-
pressions," but, with regard to the mass of them,
he says, "the truth is, that many of them are
very loose in their course, to my heartbreaking
sorrow." Mr. Treat is described as a Calvinist
of the strictest kind, not one of those who, by
giving up or explaining away, become like a
porcupine disarmed of its quills, but a consistent
Calvinist, who can dart his quills to a distance
and courageously defend himself. There exists
a volume of his sermons in manuscript, "which,"
says a commentator, "appear to have been de-
signed for publication." I quote the following
sentences at second hand, from a Discourse on
Luke xvi. 23, addressed to sinners : —

"Thou must erelong go to the bottomless pit.
Hell hath enlarged herself, and is ready to re-
ceive thee. There is room enough for thy
entertainment. . . .

"Consider, thou art going to a place prepared
by God on purpose to exalt his justice in, — a
place made for no other employment but tor-
ments. Hell is God's house of correction ; and,
remember, God doth all things like himself.
^Vhen God would show his justice, and what is
the weight of his wrath, he makes a hell where it

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 57

shall, indeed, appear to purpose. . . . Woe to
thy soul when thou shalt be set up as a butt for
the arrows of the Almighty. ...

"Consider, God himself shall be the principal
agent in thy misery, — his breath is the bellows
which blows up the flame of hell forever ; — and
if he punish thee, if he meet thee in his fury, he
will not meet thee as a man ; he will give thee an
omnipotent blow."

"Some think sinning ends with this life; but
it is a mistake. The creature is held under an
everlasting law; the damned increase in sin in
hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please
thee. But, remember, there shall be no pleasant
sins there; no eating, drinking, singing, danc-
ing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen waters,
but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; sins exas-
perated by torments, cursing God, spite, rage,
and blasphemy. — The guilt of all thy sins shall
be laid upon thy soul, and be made so many
heaps of fuel. . . .

"Sinner, I beseech thee, realize the truth of
these things. Do not go about to dream that
this is derogatory to God's mercy, and nothing
but a vain fable to scare children out of their wits
withal. God can be merciful, though he make
thee miserable. He shall have monuments
enough of that precious attribute, shining like
stars in the place of glory, and singing eternal
hallelujahs to the praise of Him that redeemed

58 CAPE COD

them, though, to exalt the power of his justice,
he damn sinners heaps upon heaps."

"But," continues the same writer, "with the
advantage of proclaiming the doctrine of terror,
which is naturally productive of a sublime and
impressive style of eloquence ('Triumphat ven-
toso glorise curru orator, qui pectus angit, irritat,
et implet terroribus.' Vid. Burnet, De Stat.
Mort., p. 309), he could not attain the character
of a popular preacher. His voice was so loud
that it could be heard at a great distance from
the meeting-house, even amidst the shrieks of
hysterical women, and the winds that howled
over the plains of Nauset ; but there was no more
music in it than in the discordant sounds with
which it was mingled."

"The effect of such preaching," it is said, "was
that his hearers were several times, in the course
of his ministry, awakened and alarmed ;" and on
one occasion a comparatively innocent young
man was frightened nearly out of his wits, and
Mr. Treat had to exert himself to make hell
seem somewhat cooler to him"; yet we are as-
sured that "Treat's manners were cheerful, his
conversation pleasant, and sometimes facetious,
but always decent. He was fond of a stroke of
humor, and a practical joke, and manifested his
relish for them bv lons^ and loud fits of laughter."

This was the man of whom a well-known
anecdote is told, which doubtless many of my

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 59

readers have h^ard, but which, nevertheless, I
will venture to quote : —

"After his marriage with the daughter of Mr.
Willard (pastor of the South Church in Boston),
he was sometimes invited by that gentleman to
preach in his pulpit. Mr. Willard possessed a
graceful delivery, a masculine and harmonious
voice ; and, though he did not gain much reputa-
tion by his 'Body of Divinity,' which is frequently
sneered at, particularly by those who have read
it, yet in his sermons are strength of thought and
energy of language. The natural consequence
was that he was generally admired. Mr. Treat
having preached one of his best discourses to the
congregation of his father-in-law, in his usual
unhappy manner, excited universal disgust ; and
several nice judges waited on Mr. Willard, and
begged that Mr. Treat, who was a worthy, pious
man, it was true, but a wretched preacher, might
never be invited into his pulpit again. To this
request Mr. Willard made no reply ; but he de-
sired his son-in-law to lend him the discourse;
which being left with him, he delivered it with-
out alteration to his people a few weeks after.
They ran to Mr. Willard and requested a copy
for the press. *See the difference,' they cried,
* between yourself and your son-in-law; you
have preached a sermon on the same text as Mr.
Treat's, but whilst his was contemptible, yours
is excellent.' As is observed in a note, 'Mr.

60 CAPE COD

Willard, after producing the sermon in the hand-
writing of Mr. Treat, might have addressed
these sage critics in the words of Phsedrus,

"*En hie declarat. quales sitis judices.'"^

Mr. Treat died of a stroke of the palsy, just
after the memorable storm known as the Great
Snow, which left the ground around his house
entirely bare, but heaped up the snow in the
road to an uncommon height. Through this an
arched way was dug, by which the Indians bore
his bodv to the grave.

The reader will imagine us, all the while,
steadily traversing that extensive plain in a di-
rection a little north of east toward Nauset
Beach, and reading under our umbrellas as we
sailed, while it blowed hard with mingled mist
and rain, as if we were approaching a fit anni-
versary of ]\Ir. Treat's funeral. \Ye fancied that
it was such a moor as that on which somebody
perished in the snow, as is related in the "Lights
and Shadows of Scottish Life."

The next minister settled here was the "Rev.
Samuel Osborn, who was born in Ireland, and
educated at the Universitv of Dublin." He is
said to have been "A man of wisdom and virtue,"
and taught his people the use of peat, and the art
of drying and preparing it, which as they had
scarcely any other fuel, was a great blessing to

* Lib. V. Fab. 5.

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 61

them. He also introduced improvements in
agriculture. But, notwithstanding his many
services, as he embraced the religion of Armin-
ius, some of his flock became dissatisfied. At
length, an ecclesiastical council, consisting of
ten ministers, with their churches, sat upon him,
and they, naturally enough, spoiled his useful-
ness. The council convened at the desire of two
divine philosophers, — Joseph Doane and Na-
thaniel Freeman.

In their report they say, *'It appears to the
council that the Rev. Mr. Osborn hath, in his
preaching to this people, said, that what Christ
did and suffered doth nothing abate or diminish
our obligation to obey the law of God, and that
Christ's suffering and obedience were for him-
self ; both parts of which, we think, contain dan-
gerous error."

"Also : 'It hath been said, and doth appear to
this council, that the Rev. Mr. Osborn, both in
public and in private, asserted that there are no
promises in the Bible but what are conditional,
which we think, also, to be an error, and do say
that there are promises which are absolute and
without any condition, — such as the promise of
a new heart, and that he will write his law in our
hearts.'"

"Also, they say, 'it hath been alleged, and
doth appear to us, that Mr. Osborn hath de-
clared, that obedience is a considerable cause of a

62 CAPE COD

person's justification, which, we think, contains
very dangerous error.'"

And many the hke distinctions they made,
such as some of my readers, probably, are more
famiHar with than I am. So, far in the East,
among the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil,
so-called, the Chaldseans, and others, according
to the testimony of travellers, you may still hear
these remarkable disputations on doctrinal points
going on. Osborn was, accordingly, dismissed,
and he removed to Boston, where he kept school
for many years. But he was fully justified, me-
thinks, by his works in the peat-meadow; one
proof of which is, that he lived to be between
ninety and one hundred years old.

The next minister was the Rev. Benjamin
Webb, of whom, though a neighboring clergy-
man pronounced him "the best man and the
best minister whom he ever knew," yet the his-
torian says that,

*' As he spent his days in the uniform discharge
of his duty (it reminds one of a country muster)
and there were no shades to give relief to his
character, not much can be said of him. (Pity
the Devil did not plant a few shade-trees along
his avenues.) His heart was as pure as the new-
fallen snow, which completely covers every dark
spot in a field ; his mind was as serene as the sky
in a mild evening in June, when the moon shines
without a cloud. Name any virtue, and that vir-

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 63

tue he practised ; name any vice, and that vice he
shunned. But if pecuHar qualities marked his
character, they were his humility, his gentleness,
and his love of God. The people had long been
taught by a son of thunder (Mr. Treat) : in him
they were instructed by a son of consolation, who
sweetly allured them to virtue by soft persuasion,
and by exhibiting the mercy of the Supreme
Being ; for his thoughts were so much in heaven
that they seldom descended to the dismal regions
below; and though of the same religious senti-
ments as Mr. Treat, yet his attention was turned
to those glad tidings of great joy which a Saviour
came to publish."

We were interested to hear that such a man
had trodden the plains of Nauset.

Turning over further in our book, our eyes fell
on the name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom, of
Orleans; "Senex emunctse naris, doctus, et
auctor elegantium verborum, facetus, et dulcis
festique sermonis." And, again, on that of the
Rev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: "Vir humiHs,
mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes; (there was
need of him there ;) suis commodis in terra non
studens, reconditis thesauris in coelo." An easy
virtue that, there, for methinks no inhabitant of
Dennis could be very studious about his earthly
commodity, but must regard the bulk of his
treasures as in heaven. But probably the most
just and pertinent character of all is that which

64 CAPE COD

1

appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim Briggs,
of Chatham, in the language of the later Romans,
''Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wechekum," — which
not being interpreted, we know not what it means,
though we have no doubt it occurs somewhere in
the Scriptures, probably in the Apostle Eliot's
Epistle to the Nipmucks. I

Let no one think that I do not love the old
ministers. They were, probably, the best men of
their generation, and they deserve that their biog-
raphies should fill the pages of the town his-
tories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings"
of which they tell, and which, perchance, they
heard, I might write in a worthier strain than
this.

There was no better way to make the reader
realize how wide and peculiar that plain was, and
how long it took to traverse it, than by inserting
these extracts in the midst of my narrative.

THE BEACH

AT length we reached the seemingly retreat-
/■\ ing boundary of the plain, and entered
what had appeared at a distance an up-
land marsh, but proved to be dry sand cov-
ered with Beach-grass, the Bearberry, Bayberry,
Shrub-oaks, and Beach-plum, slightly ascending
as we approached the shore ; then, crossing over
a belt of sand on which nothing grew, though the
roar of the sea sounded scarcely louder than be-
fore, and we were prepared to go half a mile far-
ther, we suddenly stood on the edge of a bluff
overlooking the Atlantic. Far below us was the
beach, from half a dozen to a dozen rods in width,
with a long line of breakers rushing to the strand.
The sea was exceedingly dark and stormy, the
sky completely overcast, the clouds still dropping
rain, and the wind seemed to blow not so much
as the exciting cause, as from sympathy with the
already agitated ocean. The waves broke on the
bars at some distance from the shore, and curv-
ing green or yellow as if over so many unseen
dams, ten or twelve feet high, like a thousand
waterfalls, rolled in foam to the sand. There was

5

66 CAPE COD

nothing but that savage ocean between us and
Europe.

Having got down the bank, and as close to the
water as we could, where the sand was the hard-
est, leaving the Nauset Lights behind us, we
began to walk leisurely up the beach, in a north-
west direction, towards Provincetown, which
was about twenty-five miles distant, still sailing
under our umbrellas with a strong aft wind, ad-
miring in silence, as we walked, the great force
of the ocean stream, —

TTOTafiOLO fxiya a6ivo<; fi/ceavoto.

The white breakers were rushing to the shore;
the foam ran up the sand, and then ran back as
far as we could see (and we imagined how much
farther along the Altantic coast, before and be-
hind us), as regularly, to compare great things
with small, as the master of a choir beats time
with his white wand ; and ever and anon a higher
wave caused us hastily to deviate from our path,
and we looked back on our tracks filled with
water and foam. The breakers looked like droves
of a thousand wild horses of Neptune, rushing to
the shore, with their white manes streaming far
behind ; and when at length the sun shone for a
moment, their manes were rainbow- tinted. Also,
the long kelp-weed was tossed up from time to
time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the
brine.

A Cape Cod citizen

THE BEACH 67

There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none
that day, — for they had all sought harbors in
the late storm, and had not been able to get out
again ; and the only human beings whom we saw
on the beach for several days were one or two
wreckers looking for drift-wood, and fragments
of wrecked vessels. After an easterly storm in
the spring, this beach is sometimes strewn with
eastern wood from one end to the other, which,
as it belongs to him who saves it, and the Cape
is nearly destitute of wood, is a Godsend to the
inhabitants. We soon met one of these wreckers,
— a regular Cape Cod man, with whom we par-
leyed, with a bleached and weather-beaten face,
within whose wrinkles I distinguished no partic-
ular feature. It was like an old sail endowed
with life, — a hanging cliff of weather-beaten
flesh, — like one of the clay boulders which oc-
curred in that sand-bank. He had on a hat which
had seen salt water, and a coat of many pieces
and colors, though it was mainly the color of the
beach, as if it had been sanded. His variegated
back — for his coat had many patches, even
between the shoulders — was a rich study to us,
when we had passed him and looked round. It
might have been dishonorable for him to have so
many scars behind, it is true, if he had not had
many more and more serious ones in front. He
looked as if he sometimes saw a doughnut, but
never descended to comfort ; too grave to laugh,

68 CAPE COD

too tough to cry; as indifferent as a clam, — like
a sea-clam with hat on and legs, that was out
walking the strand. He may have been one of
the Pilgrims, — Peregrine ^^^lite, at least, — who
has kept on the back-side of the Cape, and let the
centuries go by. He was looking for wrecks, old
logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles,
or bits of boards and joists, even chips, which he
drew out of the reach of the tide, and stacked up
to dry. ^Vhen the log was too large to carry far,
he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or
rolling it a few feet appropriated it by sticking
two sticks into the ground crosswise above it.
Some rotten trunk, which in IVIaine cumbers the
ground, and is, perchance, thrown into the water
on purpose, is here thus carefully picked up, split
and dried, and husbanded. Before winter the
wrecker painfully carries these things up the
bank on his shoulders by a long diagonal slant-
ing path made with a hoe in the sand, if there is
no hollow at hand. You may see his hooked
pike-staff always lying on the bank ready for
use. He is the true monarch of the beach, whose
"right there is none to dispute," and he is as
much identified with it as a beach-bird.

Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes
Dalagen's relation of the ways and usages of the
Greenlanders, and says, "^^^loever finds drift-
wood, or the spoils of a shipwreck on the strand,
enjoys it as his own, though, he does not live

THE BEACH 69

there. But he must haul it ashore and lay a
stone upon it, as a token that some one has taken
possession of it, and this stone is the deed of
security, for no other Greenlander will offer to
meddle with it afterwards." Such is the in-
stinctive law of nations. We have also this ac-
count of drift-wood in Crantz: "As he (the
Founder of Nature) has denied this frigid rocky
region the growth of trees, he has bid the streams
of the Ocean to convey to its shores a great deal
of wood, which accordingly comes floating
thither, part without ice, but the most part along
with it, and lodges itself between the islands.
Were it not for this, we Europeans should have no
wood to burn there, and the poor Greenlanders
(who, it is true, do not use wood, but train, for
burning) would, however, have no wood to roof
their houses, to erect their tents, as also to build
their boats, and to shaft their arrows (yet there
grew some small but crooked alders, &c.), by
which they must procure their maintenance,
clothing and train for warmth, light, and cook-
ing. Among this wood are great trees torn up by
the roots, which by driving up and down for
many years and rubbing on the ice, are quite
bare of branches and bark, and corroded with
great wood- worms. A small part of this drift-
wood are willows, alder and birch trees, which
come out of the bays in the south of (i. e. Green-
land) ; also large trunks of aspen-trees, which

70 CAPE COD

must come from a greater distance; but the
greatest part is pine and fir. We find also a
good deal of a sort of wood finely veined, with
few branches ; this I fancy is larch- wood, which
likes to decorate the sides of lofty, stony moun-
tains. There is also a solid, reddish wood, of a
more agreeable fragrance than the common fir,
with visible cross-veins; which I take to be the
same species as the beautiful silver-firs, or zirbel,
that have the smell of cedar, and grow on the
high Grison hills, and the Switzers wainscot their
rooms with them." The wrecker directed us to a
slight depression, called Snow's Hollow, by which
we ascended the bank, — for elsewhere, if not
difficult, it was inconvenient to climb it on ac-
count of the sliding sand, which filled our shoes.

This sand-bank — the backbone of the Cape
— rose directly from the beach to the height of
a hundred feet or more above the ocean. It was
with singular emotions that we first stood upon
it and discovered what a place we had chosen to
walk on. On our right, beneath us, was the
beach of smooth and gently sloping sand, a
dozen rods in width; next, the endless series of
white breakers; further still, the light green
water over the bar, which runs the whole length
of the forearm of the Cape, and beyond this
stretched the unwearied and illimitable ocean.
On our left, extending back from the veiy edge
of the bank, was a perfect desert of shining sand.

THE BEACH 71

from thirty to eighty rods in width, skirted in the
distance by small sand-hills fifteen or twenty
feet high; between which, however, in some
places, the sand penetrated as much farther.
Next commenced the region of vegetation —
a succession of small hills and valleys covered
with shrubbery, now glowing with the brightest
imaginable autumnal tints; and beyond this
were seen, here and there, the waters of the bay.
Here, in Wellfleet, this pure sand plateau, known
to sailors as the Table Lands of Eastham, on
account of its appearance, as seen from the
ocean, and because it once made a part of that
town, — full fifty rods in width, and in many
places much more, and sometimes full one hun-
dred and fifty feet above the ocean, — stretched
away northward from the southern boundary of
the town, without a particle of vegetation, — as
level almost as a table, — for two and a half or
three miles, or as far as the eye could reach;
slightly rising towards the ocean, then stooping
to the beach, by as steep a slope as sand could
lie on, and as regular as a military engineer could
desire. It was like the escarped rampart of a
stupendous fortress, whose glacis was the beach,
and whose champaign the ocean. — From its
surface we overlooked the greater part of the
Cape. In short, we were traversing a desert,
with the view of an autumnal landscape of ex-
traordinary brilliancy, a sort of Promised Land,

72 CAPE COD

on the one hand, and the ocean on the other.
Yet, though the prospect was so extensive, and
the country for the most part destitute of trees, a
house was rarely visible, — we never saw one
from the beach, — and the solitude was that of
the ocean and the desert combined. A thousand
men could not have seriously interrupted it, but
would have been lost in the vastness of the scen-
ery as their footsteps in the sand.

The whole coast is so free from rocks, that we
saw but one or two for more than twenty miles.
The sand was soft like the beach, and trying to
the eyes when the sun shone. A few piles of
drift-wood, which some wreckers had painfully
brought up the bank and stacked up there to
dry, being the only objects in the desert, looked
indefinitely large and distant, even like wigwams,
though, when we stood near them, they proved
to be insignificant little "jags" of wood.

For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset
Lights, the bank held its height, though farther
north it was not so level as here, but interrupted
by slight hollows, and the patches of Beach-grass
and Bayberry frequently crept into the sand to
its edge. There are some pages entitled "A de-
scription of the Eastern Coast of the County of
Barnstable," printed in 1802, pointing out the
spots on which the Trustees of the Humane
Society have erected huts called Charity or Hu-
mane Houses, "and other places where ship-

THE BEACH 73

wrecked seamen may look for shelter." Two
thousand copies of this were dispersed, that
every vessel which frequented this coast might
be provided with one. I have read this Ship-
wrecked Seaman's Manual with a melancholy
kind of interest, — for the sound of the surf, or,
you might say, the moaning of the sea, is heard
all through it, as if its author were the sole sur-
vivor of a shipwreck himself. Of this part of the
coast he says: "This highland approaches the
ocean with steep and lofty banks, which it is ex-
tremely diflScult to climb, especially in a storm.
In violent tempests, during very high tides, the
sea breaks against the foot of them, rendering it
then unsafe to walk on the strand which lies be-
tween them and the ocean. Should the seaman
succeed in his attempt to ascend them, he must
forbear to penetrate into the country, as houses
are generally so remote that they would escape
his research during the night; he must pass on
to the valleys by which the banks are intersected.
These valleys, which the inhabitants call Hol-
lows, run at right angles with the shore, and in
the middle or lowest part of them a road leads
from the dwelling-houses to the sea." By the
word road must not always be understood a visi-
ble cart-track.

There were these two roads for us, — an
upper and a lower one, — the bank and the
beach ; both stretching twenty-eight miles north-

74 CAPE COD

west, from Nauset Harbor to Race Point, without
a single opening into the beach, and with hardly
a serious interruption of the desert. If you were
to ford the narrow and shallow inlet at Nauset
Harbor, where there is not more than eight feet
of water on the bar at full sea, you might walk ten
or twelve miles farther, which would make a
beach forty miles long, — and the bank and
beach, on the east side of Nantucket, are but a
continuation of these. I was comparatively
satisfied. There I had got the Cape under me,
as much as if I were riding it bare-backed. It
was not as on the map, or seen from the stage-
coach ; but there I found it all out of doors, huge
and real, Cape Cod ! as it cannot be represented
on a map, color it as you will ; the thing itself,
than which there is nothing more like it, no truer
picture or account ; which you cannot go farther
and see. I cannot remember what I thought be-
fore that it was. They commonly celebrate those
beaches only which have a hotel on them, not
those which have a Humane house alone. But I
wished to see that seashore where man's works
are wrecks ; to put up at the true Atlantic House,
where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord,
and comes ashore without a wharf for the land-
ing; where the crumbling land is the only in-
valid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all
you can say of it.

We walked on quite at our leisure, now on the

THE BEACH 75

beach, now on the bank, — sitting from time to
time on some damp log, maple or yellow birch,
which had long followed the seas, but had now
at last settled on land ; or under the lee of a sand-
hill, on the bank, that we might gaze steadily on
the ocean. The bank was so steep that, where
there was no danger of its caving, we sat on its
edge, as on a bench. It was diflicult for us lands-
men to look out over the ocean without imagin-
ing land in the horizon ; yet the clouds appeared
to hang low over it, and rest on the water as they
never do on the land, perhaps on account of
the great distance to which we saw. The sand
was not without advantage, for, though it was
"heavy" walking in it, it was soft to the feet;
and, notwithstanding that it had been raining
nearly two days, when it held up for half an hour,
the sides of the sand-hills, which were porous and
sliding, afforded a dry seat. All the aspects of
this desert are beautiful, whether you behold
it in fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just
breaking out after a storm, and shining on its
moist surface in the distance, it is so white, and
pure, and level, and each slight inequality and
track is so distinctly revealed; and when your
eyes slide off this, they fall on the ocean. In
summer the mackerel gulls — which here have
their nests among the neighboring sand-hills —
pursue the traveller anxiously, now and then div-
ing close to his head with a squeak, and he may

76 CAPE COD

see them, like swallows, chase some crow w^hich
has been feeding on the beach, almost across the
Cape.

Though for some time I have not spoken of the
roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless flux
and reflux of the waves, yet they did not for a
moment cease to dash and roar, with such a
tumult that if you had been there, you could
scarcely have heard my voice the while; and
they are dashing and roaring this very moment,
though it may be with less din and violence, for
there the sea never rests. We were wholly ab-
sorbed by this spectacle and tumult, and like
Chryses, though in a different mood from him,
we walked silent along the shore of the resound-
ing sea,

I put in a little Greek now and then, partly
because it sounds so much like the ocean, —
though I doubt if Homer's Mediterranean Sea
ever sounded so loud as this.

The attention of those who frequent the camp-
meetings at Eastham is said to be divided be-
tween the preaching of the Methodists and the
preaching of the billows on the back-side of the
Cape, for they all stream over here in the course

* We have no word in English to express the sound of many
waves, dashing at once, whether gently or violently, TroAix^Aoicr/Jotos
to the ear, and, in the ocean's gentle moods, an avapiO^ov yeXacr/ia
to the eve.

THE BEACH 77

of their stay. I trust that in this case the loudest
voice carries it. With what effect may we sup-
pose the ocean to say, "My hearers!" to the
multitude on the bank ! On that side some John
N. Maffit; on this, the Reverend Poluphlois-
boios Thalassa.

There was but little weed cast up here, and
that kelp chiefly, there being scarcely a rock for
rockweed to adhere to. Who has not had a
vision from some vessel's deck, when he had still
his land-legs on, of this great brown apron, drift-
ing half upright, and quite submerged through
the green water, clasping a stone or a deep-sea
mussel in its unearthly fingers ? I have seen it
carrying a stone half as large as my head. We
sometimes watched a mass of this cable-like
weed, as it was tossed up on the crest of a breaker,
waiting with interest to see it come in, as if there
were some treasure buoyed up by it; but we
were always surprised and disappointed at the
insignificance of the mass which had attracted us.
As we looked out over the water, the smallest ob-
jects floating on it appeared indefinitely large,
we were so impressed by the vastness of the
ocean, and each one bore so large a proportion to
the whole ocean, which we saw. We were so
often disappointed in the size of such things as
came ashore, the ridiculous bits of wood or weed,
with which the ocean labored, that we began to
doubt whether the Atlantic itself would bear a

78 CAPE COD

still closer inspection, and wonld not turn out to
be a but small pond, if it should come ashore to
us. This kelp, oar-weed, tangle. deviFs-apron.
sole-leather, or ribbon-weed. — as various spe-
cies are called, — appeared to us a singularly
marine and fabulous product, a lit invention for
Xeptune to adorn his car with, or a freak of Pro-
teus. All that is told of the sea has a fabulous
sound to an inhabitant of the land, and all its
products have a certain fabulous quality, as if
they belonged to another planet, from sea-weed
to a sailor's varn. or a tish-storv. In this element
the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are
strangely mingled. One species of kelp, accord-
incj to Borv St. Vincent, has a stem tifteen hun-
di*ed feet long, and hence is the longest vegetable
known, and a brig's crew spent two days to no
purpose collecting the trunks of another kind
cast ashore on the Falkland Islands, mistakinor it
for drift-wood. (See Harvey on Alga.^ This
species looked almost edible; at least, I thought
that if I were starvino: I would trv it. One sailor
told me that the cows ate it. It cut like cheese :
for I took the earliest opportunity to sit down and
deliberately whittle up a fathom or two of it, that
I might become more intimately acquainted with
it, see how it cut, and if it were hollow all the wav

ft

through. The blade looked like a broad belt,
whose edges had been quilled, or as if stretched
by hammering, and it was also twisted spirally.

THE BEACH 79

The extremity was cjenerallv worn and ragired
from the lashing of the waves. A piece of the
stem which I carried home shrunk to one quarter
of its size a week afterward, and was completely
covered with crvstals of salt like frost. The
reader will excuse mv ijreenness. — though it is
not sea-greenness, like his, perchance, — for I
live bv a river-shore, where this weed does not
wash up. When we consider in what meadows
it irrew. and how it was raked, and in what kind
of hav weather o-ot in or out. we mav well be
curious about it. One who is weatherwise has
ijiven the foUowinor account of the matter.

"When desicends on the Atlantic
The gig:uitic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Lixndward ui his \\-rath he scourges

The toiling surges.
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.

"From Bermuda's reefs, from edges
Of sunken ledges.
On some far-otf bright Azore;
From Bahama and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Sui^s of S;ui Salvador;

"From the trembling surf that buries
The Orknevan Skerries.
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks and ships and drifting
Spjirs. uplifting
On the desolate rainv seas;

80 CAPE COD

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main."

But he was not thinking of this shore, when he
added : —

"Till, in sheltered coves and reaches
Of sandy beaches.
All have found repose again."

These weeds were the symbols of those gro-
tesque and fabulous thoughts which have not
yet got into the sheltered coves of literature.

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart,"
And not yet "in books recorded
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart."

The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea-
jellies, which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one
of the lowest forms of animal life, some white,
some wine-colored, and a foot in diameter. I at
first thought that they were a tender part of some
marine monster, which the storm or some other
foe had mangled. What right has the sea to bear
in its bosom such tender things as sea-jellies and
mosses, when it has such a boisterous shore that
the stoutest fabrics are wrecked against it?
.Strange that it should undertake to dandle such
delicate children in its arm. I did not at first

THE BEACH 81

recognize these for the same which I had formerly
seen in myriads in Boston Harbor, rising, with a
waving motion, to the surface, as if to meet the
sun, and discoloring the waters far and wide, so
that I seemed to be sailing through a mere sunfish
soup. They say that when you endeavor to take
one up, it will spill out the other side of your hand
like quicksilver. Before the land rose out of the
ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned ; and
between high and low water mark, where she is
partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos
reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can
inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all the while flying
over our heads and amid the breakers, some-
times two white ones pursuing a black one;
quite at home in the storm, though they are as
delicate organizations as sea-jellies and mosses;
and we saw that they were adapted to their cir-
cumstances rather by their spirits than their
bodies. Theirs must be an essentially wilder,
that is, less human, nature than that of larks and
robins. Their note was like the sound of some
vibrating metal, and harmonized well with the
scenery and the roar of the surf, as if one had
rudely touched the strings of the lyre, which ever
lies on the shore ; a ragged shred of ocean music
tossed aloft on the spray. But if I were required
to name a sound the remembrance of which
most perfectly revives the impression which the
beach has made, it would be the dreary peep of

82 CAPE COD

the piping plover {Charadrius melodus) which
haunts there. Their voices, too, are heard as a
fugacious part in the dirge which is ever played
along the shore for those mariners who have been
lost in the deep since first it was created. But
through all this dreariness we seemed to have a
pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody,
for always the same strain which is a dirge to one
household is a morning song of rejoicing to
another.

A remarkable method of catching gulls, de-
rived from the Indians, was practised in Well-
fleet in 1794. "The Gull House," it is said, "is
built with crotchets, fixed in the ground on the
beach," poles being stretched across for the top,
and the sides made close with stakes and sea-
weed. "The poles on the top are covered with
lean whale. The man being placed within, is
not discovered by the fowls, and while they are
contending for and eating the flesh, he draws
them in, one by one, between the poles, until he
has collected forty or fifty." Hence, perchance,
a man is said to be gulled, when he is taken in.
We read that one "sort of gulls is called by the
Dutch mallemucke, i. e. the foolish fly, because
they fall upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and,
indeed, all gulls are foolishly bold and easy to be
shot. The Norwegians call this bird havhest,
sea-horse (and the English translator says, it is
probably what we call boobies). If they have

THE BEACH 83

eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it
again till they are tired. It is this habit in the
gulls of parting with their property [disgorging
the contents of their stomachs to the skuas],
which has given rise to the terms gull, guller, and
gulling, among men." We also read that they
used to kill small birds which roosted on the
beach at night, by making a fire with hog's lard
in a frying-pan. The Indians probably used
pine torches ; the birds flocked to the light, and
were knocked down with a stick. We noticed
holes dug near the edge of the bank, where gun-
ners conceal themselves to shoot the large gulls
which coast up and down a-fishing, for these are
considered good to eat.

We found some large clams of the species
Mactra solidissima, which the storm had torn up
from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected one
of the largest, about six inches in length, and
carried it along, thinking to try an experiment
on it. We soon after met a wrecker, with a grap-
ple and a rope, who said that he was looking for
tow cloth, which had made part of the cargo of
the ship Franklin, which was wrecked here in the
spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost.
The reader may remember this wreck, from the
circumstance that a letter was found in the cap-
tain's valise, which washed ashore, directing him
to wreck the vessel before he got to America, and
from the trial which took place in consequence.

84 CAPE COD

The wrecker said that tow cloth was still cast up
in such storms as this. He also told us that the
clam which I had was the sea-clam, or hen, and
was good to eat. We took our nooning under a
sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary
little hollow, on the top of the bank, while it al-
ternately rained and shined. There, having re-
duced some damp drift-wood, which I had picked
up on the shore, to shavings with my knife, I
kindled a fire with a match and some paper and
cooked my clam on the embers for my dinner;
for breakfast was commonly the only meal which
I took in a house on this excursion. When the
clam was done, one valve held the meat and the
other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I
found it sweet and savory, and ate the whole with
a relish. Indeed, with the addition of a cracker
or two, it would have been a bountiful dinner. I
noticed that the shells were such as I had seen in
the sugar-kit at home. Tied to a stick, they for-
merly made the Indian's hoe hereabouts.

At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had
two or three rainbows over the sea, the showers
ceased, and the heavens gradually cleared up,
though the wind still blowed as hard and the
breakers ran as high as before. Keeping on, we
soon after came to a Charity-house, which we
looked into to see how the shipwrecked mariner
might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow
by the sea-side, just within the bank, stands a

THE BEACH 85

lonely building on piles driven into the sand, with
a slight nail put through the staple, which a freez-
ing man can bend, with some straw, perchance,
on the floor on which he may lie, or which he may
burn in the fireplace to keep him alive. Perhaps
this hut has never been required to shelter a ship-
wrecked man, and the benevolent person who
promised to inspect it annually, to see that the
straw and matches are here, and that the boards
will keep ofT the wind, has grown remiss and
thinks that storms and shipwrecks are over;
and this very night a perishing crew may pry
open its door with their numbed fingers and
leave half their number dead here by morning.
When I thought what must be the condition of the
families which alone would ever occupy or had
occupied them, what must have been the tragedy
of the winter evenings spent by human beings
around their hearths, these houses, though they
were meant for human dwellings, did not look
cheerful to me. They appeared but a stage to
the grave. The gulls flew around and screamed
over them ; the roar of the ocean in storms, and
the lapse of its waves in calms, alone resounds
through them, all dark and empty within, year
in, year out, except, perchance, on one memora-
ble night. Houses of entertainment for ship-
wrecked men ! What kind of sailors' homes
were they ?

"Each hut," says the author of the "Descrip-

86 CAPE COD

tion of the Eastern Coast of the County of Barn-
stable," "stands on piles, is eight feet long, eight
feet wide, and seven feet high ; a sliding door is
on the south, a sliding shutter on the west, and a
pole, rising fifteen feet above the top of the build-
ing, on the east. Within it is supplied either with
straw or hay, and is further accommodated with a
bench." They have varied little from this model
now. There are similar huts at the Isle of Sable
and Anticosti, on the north, and how far south
along the coast I know not. It is pathetic to read
, the minute and faithful directions which he gives
to seamen who rnay be wrecked on this coast, to
guide them to the nearest Charity-house, or other
shelter, for, as is said of Eastham, though there
are a few houses within a mile of the shore, yet
"in a snow-storm, which rages here with exces-
sive fury, it would be almost impossible to dis-
cover them either by night or by day." You hear
their imaginary guide thus marshalling, cheering,
directing the dripping, shivering, freezing troop
along; "at the entrance of this valley the sand
has gathered, so that at present a little climbing
is necessary. Passing over several fences and
taking heed not to enter the wood on the right
hand, at the distance of three-quarters of a mile
a house is to be found. This house stands on the
south side of the road, and not far from it on the
south is Pamet River, which runs from east to
west through body of salt marsh." To him cast

THE BEACH 87

ashore in Eastham, he says, "The meeting-house
is without a steeple, but it may be distinguished
from the dwelling-houses near it by its situation,
which is between two small groves of locusts, one
on the south and one on the north, — that on the
south being three times as long as the other.
About a mile and a quarter from the hut, west
by north, appear the top and arms of a windmill."
And so on for many pages.

We did not learn whether these houses had
been the means of saving any lives, though this
writer says, of one erected at the head of Stout's
Creek in Truro, that "it was built in an im-
proper manner, having a chimney in it ; and was
placed on a spot where no beach-grass grew. The
strong winds blew the sand from its foundation
and the weight of the chimney brought it to the
ground ; so that in January of the present year
[1802] it was entirely demolished. This event
took place about six weeks before the Brutus
was cast away. If it had remained, it is probable
that the whole of the unfortunate crew of that
ship would have been saved, as they gained the
shore a few rods only from the spot where the
hut had stood."

This "Charity-house," as the wrecker called
it, this "Humane-house," as some call it, that is,
the one to which we first came, had neither win-
dow nor sliding shutter, nor clapboards, nor
paint. As we have said, there was a rusty nail

88 CAPE COD

put through the staple. However, as we wished
to get an idea of a Humane house, and we hoped
that we should never have a better opportunity,
we put our eyes, by turns, to a knot-hole in the
door, and after long looking, without seeing,
into the dark, — not knowing how many ship-
wrecked men's bones we might see at last, look-
ing with the eye of faith, knowing that, though
to him that knocketh it may not always be
opened, yet to him that looketh long enough
through a knot-hole the inside shall be visible, —
for we had had some practice at looking inward,

— by steadily keeping our other ball covered
from the light meanwhile, putting the outward
world behind us, ocean and land, and the beach,

— till the pupil became enlarged and collected
the rays of light that were wandering in that dark
(for the pupil shall be enlarged by looking ; there
never was so dark a night but a faithful and
patient eye, however small, might at last prevail
over it), — after all this, I say, things began to
take shape to our vision, — if we may use this
expression where there was nothing but empti-
ness, — and we obtained the long-wished-for
insight. Though we thought at first that it was
a hopeless case, after several minutes' steady
exercise of the divine faculty, our prospects be-
gan decidedly to brighten, and we were ready to
exclaim with the blind bard of "Paradise Lost
and Regained," —

THE BEACH 89

"Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first born,
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam.
May I express thee unblamed ? "

A little longer, and a chimney rushed red on
our sight. In short, when our vision had grown
familiar with the darkness, we discovered that
there were some stones and some loose wads of
wool on the floor, and an empty fireplace at the
further end; but it was not supplied with
matches, or straw, or hay, that we could see, nor
"accommodated with a bench." Indeed, it was
the wreck of all cpsmical beauty there within.

Turning our backs on the outward world, we
thus looked through the knot-hole into the Hu-
mane house, into the very bowels of mercy ; and
for bread we found a stone. It was literally a
great cry (of sea-mews outside), and a little wool.
However, we were glad to sit outside, under the
lee of the Humane house, to escape the piercing
wind ; and there we thought how cold is charity !
how inhumane humanity ! This, then, is what
charity hides ! Virtues antique and far away
with ever a rusty nail over the latch; and very
difficult to keep in repair, withal, it is so uncer-
tain whether any will ever gain the beach near
you. So we shivered round about, not being
able to get into it, ever and anon looking through
the knot-hole into that night without a star,
until we concluded that it was not a humane
house at all, but a sea-side box, now shut up.

90 CAPE COD

belonging to some of the family of Night or
Chaos, where they spent their summers by the
sea, for the sake of the sea breeze, and that it
was not proper for us to be prying into their
concerns.

My companion had declared before this that I
had not a particle of sentiment, in rather abso-
lute terms, to my astonishment; but I suspect
he meant that my legs did not ache just then,
though I am not wholly a stranger to that senti-
ment. But I did not intend this for a senti-
mental journey.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN

HAVING walked about eight miles since
we struck the beach, and passed the
boundary between Wellfleet and Truro,
a stone post in the sand, — for even this sand
comes under the jurisdiction of one town or an-
other, — we turned inland over barren hills and
valleys, whither the sea, for some reason, did not
follow us, and, tracing up a Hollow, discovered
two or three sober-looking houses within half a
mile, uncommonly near the eastern coast. Their
garrets were apparently so full of chambers, that
their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and
we did not doubt that there was room for us
there. Houses near the sea are generally low
and broad. These were a story and a half high ;
but if you merely counted the windows in their
gable-ends, you would think that there were
many stories more, or, at any rate, that the half-
story was the only one thought worthy of being
illustrated. The great number of windows in
the ends of the houses, and their irregularity in
size and position, here and elsewhere on the Cape,
struck us agreeably, — as if each of the various
occupants who had their cunabula behind had

92 CAPE COD

punched a hole where his necessities required it,
and, according to his size and stature, without
regard to outside effect. There were windows
for the grown folks, and windows for the chil-
dren, — three or four apiece ; as a certain man
had a large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat,
and another smaller one for the kitten. Some-
times they were so low under the eaves that I
thought they must have perforated the plate
beam for another apartment, and I noticed some
which were triangular, to fit that part more ex-
actly. The ends of the houses had thus as many
muzzles as a revolver, and, if the inhabitants have
the same habit of staring out the windows that
some of our neighbors have, a traveller must
stand a small chance with them.

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted
houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as
well as picturesque, than the modern and more
pretending ones, which were less in harmony
with the scenery, and less firmly planted.

These houses were on the shores of a chain of
ponds, seven in number, the source of a small
stream called Herring River, which empties into
the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers on the
Cape; they will, perhaps, be more numerous
than herrings soon. We knocked at the door of
the first house, but its inhabitants were all gone
away. In the meanwhile, we saw the occupants
of the next one looking out the window at us.

'3

<!

X

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 93

and before we reached it an old woman came
out and fastened the door of her bulkhead, and
went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesi-
tate to knock at her door, when a grizzly-looking
man appeared, whom we took to be sixty or
seventy years old. He asked us, at first, sus-
piciously, where we were from, and what our
business was; to which we returned plain
answers.

"How far is Concord from Boston.?" he
inquired.

"Twenty miles by railroad."

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated.

"Did n't you ever hear of Concord of Revolu-
tionary fame.?"

"Didn't I ever hear of Concord.? Why, I
heard the guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill.
[They hear the sound of heavy cannon across
the Bay.] I am almost ninety ; I am eighty-eight
year old. I was fourteen year old at the time
of Concord Fight, — and where were you then .?"

We were obliged to confess that we were not
in the fight.

"Well, walk in, we'll leave it to the women,"
said he.

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an
old woman taking our hats and bundles, and the
old man continued, drawing up to the large, old-
fashioned fireplace, —

I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as

(( '

94 CAPE COD

Isaiah says ; I am all broken down this year. I
am under petticoat government here."

The family consisted of the old man, his wife,
and his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as
her mother, a fool, her son (a brutish-looking,
middle-aged man, with a prominent lower face,
who was standing by the hearth when we en-
tered, but immediately went out), and a little
boy of ten.

While my companion talked with the women,
I talked with the old man. They said that he
was old and foolish, but he was evidently too
knowing for them.

"These women," said he to me, "are both of
them poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one
is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago.
She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an
adder, and the other is not much better."

He thought well of the Bible, or at least he
s'poke well, and did not think ill, of it, for that
would not have been prudent for a man of his
age. He said that he had read it attentively for
many years, and he had much of it at his tongue's
end. He seemed deeply impressed with a sense
of his own nothingness, and would repeatedly
exclaim, —

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my
Bible is just this : that man is a poor good-for-
nothing crittur, and everything is just as God
sees fit and disposes."

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 95

"May I ask your name?" I said.

"Yes," he answered, "I am not ashamed to
tell my name. My name is . My great-
grandfather came over from England and set-
tled here."

He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had
acquired a competency in that business, and had
sons still engaged in it.

Nearly all the oyster shops and stands in
Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept
by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is
still called Billingsgate from the oysters having
been formerly planted there; but the native
oysters are said to have died^in 1770. Various
causes are assigned for this, such as a ground
frost, the carcasses of blackfish kept to rot in
the harbor, and the like, but the most common
account of the matter is, — and I find that a
similar superstition with regard to the disap-
pearance of fishes exists almost everywhere, —
that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the
neighboring towns about the right to gather them,
yellow specks appeared in them, and Providence
caused them to disappear. A few years ago
sixty thousand bushels were annually brought
from the South and planted in the harbor of
Wellfleet till they attained "the proper relish of
Billingsgate"; but now they are imported com-
monly full-grown, and laid down near their mar-
kets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water.

96 CAPE COD

being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them
better. The business was said to be still good
and improving.

The old man said that the oysters were liable
to freeze in the winter, if planted too high ; but
if it were not "so cold as to strain their eyes"
they were not injured. The inhabitants of New
Brunswick have noticed that "ice will not form
over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very intense
indeed, and when the bays are frozen over the
oyster-beds are easily discovered by the water
above them remaining unfrozen, or as the French
residents say, degele." Our host said that they
kept them in cellars all winter.

"Without anything to eat or drink .?" I asked.

"Without anything to eat or drink," he
answered.

"Can the oysters move.?"

"Just as much as my shoe."

But when I caught him saying that they
"bedded themselves down in the sand, flat side
up, round side down," I told him that my shoe
could not do that, without the aid of my foot in
it; at which he said that they merely settled
down as they grew ; if put down in a square they
would be found so; but the clam could move
quite fast. I have since been told by oystermen
of Long Island, where the oyster is still indige-
nous and abundant, that they are found in large
masses attached to the parent in their midst, and

J IVellJieet oystennan

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 97

are so taken up with their tongs ; in which case,
they say, the age of the young proves that there
could have been no motion for five or six years at
least. And Buckland in his Curiosities of Natu-
ral History (page 50) says: "An oyster who has
once taken up his position and fixed himself
when quite young can never make a change.
Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed them-
selves, but remain loose at the bottom of the sea,
have the power of locomotion; they open their
shells to their fullest extent, and then suddenly
contracting them, the expulsion of the water
forwards gives a motion backwards. A fisher-
man at Guernsey told me that he had frequently
seen oysters moving in this way."

Some still entertain the question "whether the
oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts Bay,"
and whether Wellfleet harbor was a "natural
habitat" of this fish; but, to say nothing of the
testimony of old oystermen, which, I think, is
quite conclusive, though the native oyster may
now be extinct there, I saw that their shells,
opened by the Indians, were strewn all over the
Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly
settled by Indians on account of the abundance
of these and other fish. We saw many traces of
their occupancy after this, in Truro, near Great
Hollow, and at High-Head, near East Harbor
River, — oysters, clams, cockles, and other shells,
mingled with ashes and the bones of deer and

98 CAPE COD

other quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen
arrow-heads, and in an hour or two could have
filled my pockets with them. The Indians lived
about the edges of the swamps, then probably
in some instances ponds, for shelter and water.
Moreover, Champlain in the edition of his "Voy-
ages" printed in 1613, says that in the year 1606
he and Poitrincourt explored a harbor (Barn-
stable Harbor ?) in the southerly part of what is
now called Massachusetts Bay, in latitude 42°,
about five leagues south, one point west of Cap
Blanc (Cape Cod), and there they found many
good oysters, and they named it "/e Port aux
Huistres'' ^^ Oyster Harbor). In one edition of
his map (1632), the ''R. aux Escailles'' is drawn
emptying into the same part of the bay, and on
the map '' Novi Belgii,'' in Ogilby's "America "
(1670), the words "Por/ aux Huistres'' are
placed against the same place. Also William
Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks,
in his "New England's Prospect," published in
1634, of "a great oyster-bank" in Charles River,
and of another in the Mistick, each of which
obstructed the navigation of its river. "The
oysters," says he, "be great ones in form of a
shoehorn ; some be a foot long ; these breed on
certain banks that are bare every spring tide.
This fish without the shell is so big, that it must
admit of a division before you can well get it into
your mouth." Oysters are still found there.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 99

(Also, see Thomas Morton's " New English
Canaan," page 90.)

Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was
not easily obtained ; it was raked up, but never
on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore there in
small quantities in storms. The fisherman
sometimes wades in water several feet deep, and
thrusts a pointed stick into the sand before him.
When this enters between the valves of a clam, he
closes them on it, and is drawn out. It has been
known to catch and hold coot and teal which
were preying on it. . I chanced to be on the bank
of the Acushnet at New Bedford one day since
this, watching some ducks, when a man informed
me that, having let out his young ducks to seek
their food amid the samphire {Salicornia) and
other weeds along the river-side at low tide that
morning, at length he noticed that one remained
stationary, amid the weeds, something preventing
it from following the others, and going to it he
found its foot tightly shut in a quahog's shell.
He took up both together, carried them to his
home, and his wife opening the shell with a knife
released the duck and cooked the quahog. The
old man said that the great clams were good to
eat, but that they always took out a certain part
which was poisonous, before they cooked them.
"People said it would kill a cat." I did not tell
him that I had eaten a lar^e one entire that after-
noon, but began to think that I was tougher than

100 CAPE COD

a cat. He stated that pedlers came round there,
and sometimes tried to sell the women folks a
skimmer, but he told them that their women had
got a better skimmer than they could make, in
the shell of their clams ; it was shaped just right
for this purpose. — They call them "skim-alls"
in some places. He also said that the sun-squall
was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors
came across it, they did not meddle with it, but
heaved it out of their way. I told him that I had
handled it that afternoon, and had felt no ill
effects as yet. But he said it made the hands
itch, especially if they had previously been
scratched, or if I put it into my bosom I should
find out what it was.

He informed us that no ice ever formed on the
back side of the Cape, or not more than once in
a century, and but little snow lay there, it being
either absorbed or blown or washed away.
Sometimes in winter, when the tide was down,
the beach was frozen, and afforded a hard road
up the back side for some thirty miles, as smooth
as a floor. One winter when he was a boy, he
and his father "took right out into the back side
before daylight, and walked to Provincetown
and back to dinner."

When I asked what they did with all that
barren-looking land, where I saw so few culti-
vated fields, — "Nothing," he said.

"Then why fence your fields.''"

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 101

*'To keep the sand from blowing and covering
up the whole."

*'The yellow sand," said he, "has some life in
it, but the white little or none."

When, in answer to his questions, I told him
that I was a surveyor, he said that they who sur-
veyed his farm were accustomed, where the
ground was uneven, to loop up each chain as
high as their elbows; that was the allowance
they made, and he wished to know if I could tell
him why they did not come out according to his
deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have more
respect for surveyors of the old school, which I
did not wonder at. "King George the Third,"
said he, "laid out a road four rods wide and
straight the whole length of the Cape," but
where it was now he could not tell.

This story of the surveyors reminded me of a
Long-Islander, who once, when I had made
ready to jump from the bow of his boat to the
shore, and he thought that I underrated the dis-
tance and would fall short, — though I found
afterward that he judged of the elasticity of my
joints by his own, — told me that when he came
to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held
up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to
cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew
that he could jump it. "Why," I told him, "to
say nothing of the Mississippi, and other small
watery streams, I could blot out a star with my

102 CAPE COD

foot, but I would not engage to jump that dis-
tance," and asked how he knew when he had ffot
his leg at the right elevation. But he regarded
his legs as no less accurate than a pair of screw
dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and appeared
to have a painful recollection of every degree and
minute in the arc which they described ; and he
would have had me believe that there was a
kind of hitch in his hip-joint which answered the
purpose. I suggested that he should connect
his two ankles by a string of the proper length,
w^hich should be the chord of an arc, measuring
his jumping ability on horizontal surfaces, —
assuming one leg to be a perpendicular to the
plane of the horizon, which, however, may have
been too bold an assumption in this case. Never-
theless, this was a kind of geometry in the legs
which it interested me to hear of.

Our host took pleasure in telling us the names
of the ponds, most of which we could see from
his windows, and making us repeat them after
him, to see if we had got them right. They were
Gull Pond, the largest and a very handsome one,
clear and deep, and more than a mile in circum-
ference, Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-
Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds, all connected
at high water, if I do not mistake. The coast-
surveyors had come to him for their names, and
he told them of one which they had not detected.
He said that they were not so high as formerly.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 103

There was an earthquake about four years before
he was born, which cracked the pans of the
ponds, which were of iron, and caused them to
settle. I did not remember to have read of this.
Innumerable gulls used to resort to them ; but
the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he
said, the English robbed their nests far in the
north, where they breed. He remembered well
when gulls were taken in the gull-house, and
when small birds were killed by means of a
frying-pan and fire at night. His father once
lost a valuable horse from this cause. A party
from Wellfleet having lighted their fire for this
purpose, one dark night, on Billingsgate Island,
twenty horses which were pastured there, and
this colt among them, being frightened by it, and
endeavoring in the dark to cross the passage
which separated them from the neighboring
beach, and which was then fordable at low tide,
were all swept out to sea and drowned. I ob-
served that many horses were still turned out to
pasture all summer on the islands and beaches
in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind
of common. He also described the killing of
what he called "wild hens" here, after they had
gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy.
Perhaps they were "Prairie hens" (pinnated
grouse) .

He liked the Beach-pea (Lathyrus maritimus),
cooked green, as well as the cultivated. He had

104 CAPE COD

seen it growing very abundantly in Newfound-
land, where also the inhabitants ate them, but he
had never been able to obtain any ripe for seed.
We read, under the head of Chatham, that "in
1555, during a time of great scarcity, the people
about Orford, in Sussex (England) were pre-
served from perishing by eating the seeds of this
plant, which grew there in great abundance on
the sea-coast. Cows, horses, sheep, and goats
eat it." But the writer who quoted this could
not learn that they had ever been used in Barn-
stable County.

He had been a voyager, then ? O, he had been
about the world in his day. He once considered
himself a pilot for all our coast; but now they
had changed the names so he might be bothered.

He gave us to taste what he called the Sum-
mer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised,
and frequently grafted from, but had never seen
growing elsewhere, except once, — three trees
on Newfoundland, or at the Bay of Chaleur, I
forget which, as he was sailing by. He was sure
that he could tell the tree at a distance.

At length the fool, whom my companion called
the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth,
"Damn book-pedlers, — all the time talking
about books. Better do something. Damn 'em.
I'll shoot 'em. Got a doctor down here. Damn
him, I'll get a gun and shoot him"; never once
holding up his head. Whereat the old man stood

Wellfieet

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 105

up and said in a loud voice, as if he was accus-
tomed to command, and this was not the first
time he had been obHged to exert his authority
there: "John, go sit down, mind your business,
— we've heard you talk before, — precious
little you'll do, — your bark is worse than your
bite." But, without minding, John muttered the
same gibberish over again, and then sat down at
the table which the old folks had left. He ate all
there was on it, and then turned to the apples,
which his aged mother was paring, that she
might give her guests some apple-sauce for break-
fast, but she drew them away and sent him off.

When I approached this house the next sum-
mer, over the desolate hills between it and the
shore, which are worthy to have been the birth-
place of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst
of a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he
loomed so strangely, that I mistook him for a
scarecrow.

This was the merriest old man that we had
ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His
style of conversation was coarse and plain
enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have
made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober
Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and
Mnasilus, who listened to his story.

"Not by Hsemonian hills the Thracian bard.
Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard
With deeper silence or with more regard."

106 CAPE COD

There was a strange mingling of past and
present in his conversation, for he had Hved
under King George, and might have remem-
bered when Napoleon and the moderns gener-
ally were born. He said that one day, when the
troubles between the Colonies and the mother
country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen,
was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an
old Tory, who was talking with his father, a
good Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, you
might as well undertake to pitch that pond into
the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Colonies
to undertake to gain their independence." He
remembered well General Washington, and how
he rode his horse along the streets of Boston,
and he stood up to show us how he looked.

"He was a r — a — ther large and portly-looking
man, a manly and resolute-looking officer, with
a pretty good leg as he sat on his horse." —
"There, I'll tell you, this was the way with
Washington." Then he jumped up again, and
bowed gracefully to right and left, making show
as if he were waving his hat. Said he, ^' That
was Washington."

He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution,
and was much pleased when we told him that
we had read the same in history, and that his
account agreed with the written.

"O," he said, "I know, I know! I was a
young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open ;

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 107

and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide
awake, and likes to know everything that's going
on. O, I know !"

He told us the story of the wreck of the Frank-
lin, which took place there the previous spring:
how a boy came to his house early in the morning
to know whose boat that was by the shore, for
there was a vessel in distress, and he, being an
old man, first ate his breakfast, and then walked
over to the top of the hill by the shore, and sat
down there, having found a comfortable seat,
to see the ship wrecked. She was on the bar,
only a quarter of a mile from him, and still
nearer to the men on the beach, who had got a
boat ready, but could render no assistance on
account of the breakers, for there was a pretty
high sea running. There were the passengers
all crowded together in the forward part of the
ship, and some were getting out of the cabin
windows and were drawn on deck by the others.

"I saw the captain get out his boat," said he;
"he had one little one; and then they jumped
into it one after another, down as straight as an
arrow. I counted them. There were nine.
One was a woman, and she jumped as straight
as any of them. Then they shoved off. The
sea took them back, one wave went over them,
and when they came up there were six still cling-
ing to the boat; I counted them. The next
wave turned the boat bottom upward, and emp-

108 CAPE COD

tied them all out. None of them ever came
ashore alive. There were the rest of them all
crowded together on the forecastle, the other
parts of the ship being under water. They had
seen all that happened to the boat. At length a
heavy sea separated the forecastle from the rest
of the wreck, and set it inside of the worst
breaker, and the boat was able to reach them,
and it saved all that were left, but one woman."

He also told us of the steamer Cambria's get-
ting aground on his shore a few months before
we were there, and of her English passengers
who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said,
thought the prospect from the high hill by the
shore "the most delightsome they had ever seen,"
and also of the pranks which the ladies played
with his scoop-net in the ponds. He spoke of
these travellers with their purses full of guineas,
just as our provincial fathers used to speak of
British bloods in the time of King George the
Third.

Quid loquar? Why repeat what he told us ?

"Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est,
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris,
Dulichias vexasse rates, et gurgite in alto
Ah timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis ? "

In the course of the evening I began to feel
the potency of the clam which I had eaten, and
I was obliged to confess to our host that I was
no tougher than the cat he told of; but he an-

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 109

swered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and he
could tell me that it was all imagination. At
any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, and I
was made quite sick by it for a short time, while
he laughed at my expense. I was pleased to
read afterward, in Mourt's Relation of the land-
ing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor,
these words: "We found great muscles (the old
editor says that they were undoubtedly sea-
clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl ; but we
could not eat them, for they made us all sick
that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, . . .
but they were soon well again." It brought me
nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus reminded by a
similar experience that I was so like them.
Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation of
their story, and I am prepared now to believe
every word of Mourt's Relation. I was also
pleased to find that man and the clam lay still
at the same angle to one another. But I did not
notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have
swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a
flat in the Bay and observed them. They could
squirt full ten feet before the wind, as appeared
by the marks of the drops on the sand.

"Now I'm going to ask you a question," said
the old man, "and I don't know as you can tell
me ; but you are a learned man, and I never had
any learning, only what I got by natur." — It
was in vain that we reminded him that he could

110 CAPE COD

quote Josephus to our confusion. — "I've
thought, if I ever met a learned man I should
like to ask him this question. Can you tell me
how Axy is spelt, and what it means ? Axy,''
says he ; "there's a girl over here is named Axy.
Now what is it ? What does it mean ? Is it
Scripture ? I 've read my Bible twenty-five years
over and over, and I never came across it."

"Did you read it twenty -five years for this
object.''" I asked.

"Well, how is it spelt ? Wife, how is it spelt ? "
. She said : "It is in the Bible ; I've seen it."

"Well, how do you spell it.?"

"I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh, —
Achseh."

"Does that spell Axy .? Well, do you know^
what it means.?" asked he, turning to me.

"No," I replied, "I never heard the sound
before."

"There was a schoolmaster down here once,
and they asked him what it meant, and he said
it had no more meaning than a bean-pole."

I told him that I held the same opinion with
the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster
myself, and had had strange names to deal with.
I also heard of such names as Zolieth, Beriah,
Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite
in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and
shoes, warmed his feet, and having had his sore

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 111

leg freshly salved, went off to bed ; then the fool
made bare his knotty-looking feet and legs, and
followed him ; and finally the old man exposed
his calves also to our gaze. We had never had
the good fortune to see an old man's legs before,
and were surprised to find them fair and plump
as an infant's, and we thought that he took a
pride in exhibiting them. He then proceeded to
make preparations for retiring, discoursing mean-
while with Panurgic plainness of speech on the
ills to which old humanity is subject. We were
a rare haul for him. He could commonly get
none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes
ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet
some of the laity at leisure. The evening was
not long enough for him. As I had been sick,
the old lady asked if I would not go to bed, —
it was getting late for old people; but the old
man, who had not yet done his stories, said,
"You ain't particular, are you.?"

"O, no," said I, "I am in no hurry. I believe
I have weathered the Clam cape."

"They are good," said he; "I wish I had
some of them now."

"They never hurt me," said the old lady.

"But then you took out the part that killed a
cat," said I.

At last we cut him short in the midst of his
stories, which he promised to resume in the
morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies

112 CAPE COD

who came into our room in the night to fasten
the fire-board, which rattled, as she went out
took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women
are by nature more suspicious than old men.
However, the winds howled around the house,
and made the fire-boards as well as the casements
rattle well that night. It was probably a windy
night for any locality, but we could not distin-
guish the roar which was proper to the ocean
from that which was due to the wind alone.

The sounds which the ocean makes must be
very significant and interesting to those who live
near it. When I was leaving the shore at this
place the next summer, and had got a quarter
of a mile distant, ascending a hill, I was startled
by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a
large steamer were letting off steam by the shore,
so that I caught my breath and felt my blood
run cold for an instant, and I turned about, ex-
pecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus
far out of her course, but there was nothing un-
usual to be seen. There was a low bank at the
entrance of the Hollow, between me and the
ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen
into another stratum of air in ascending the hill,
— which had wafted to me only the ordinary roar
of the sea, — I immediately descended again,
to see if I lost hearing of it ; but, without regard
to my ascending or descending, it died away in a
minute or two, and yet there was scarcely any

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 113

wind all the while. The old man said that this
was what they called the "rut," a peculiar roar
of the sea before the wind changes, which, how-
ever, he could not account for. He thought that
he could tell all about the weather from the
sounds which the sea made.

Old Josselyn, who came to New England in
1638, has it among his weather-signs, that "the
resounding of the sea from the shore, and mur-
muring of the winds in the woods, without ap-
parent wind, sheweth wind to follow."

Being on another part of the coast one night
since this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile
distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign
that the wind would work round east, and we
should have rainy weather. The ocean was
heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this
roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its
equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before
the wind. Also the captain of a packet between
this country and England told me that he some-
times met with a wave on the Atlantic coming
against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which
indicated that at a distance the wind was blowino;
from an opposite quarter, but the undulation
had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of "tide-
rips" and "ground-swells," which they suppose
to have been occasioned by hurricanes and earth-
quakes, and to have travelled many hundred,
and sometimes even two or three thousand miles.

8

114 CAPE COD

Before sunrise the next morning they let us out
again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun
come out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-
four winters was already out in the cold morning
wind, bareheaded, tripping about like a young
girl, and driving up the cow to milk. She got
the breakfast with despatch, and without noise
or bustle; and meanwhile the old man resumed
his stories, standing before us, who were sitting,
with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his
tobacco juice right and left into the fire behind
him, without regard to the various dishes which
were there preparing. At breakfast we had eels,
buttermilk cake, cold bread, green beans, dough-
nuts, and tea. The old man talked a steady
stream; and when his wife told him he had
better eat his breakfast, he said: "Don't hurry
me; I have lived too long to be hurried." I ate
of the apple-sauce and the doughnuts, which I
thought had sustained the least detriment from
the old man's shots, but my companion refused
the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot cake and
green beans, which had appeared to him to
occupy the safest part of the hearth. But on
comparing notes afterward, I told him that the
buttermilk cake was particularly exposed, and
I saw how it suffered repeatedly, and therefore
I avoided it ; but he declared that, however that
might be, he witnessed that the apple-sauce was
seriously injured, and had therefore declined

Hunting for a leak

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 115

that. After breakfkst we looked at his clock,
which was out of order, and oiled it with some
"hen's grease," for want of sweet oil, for he
scarcely could believe that we were not tinkers
or pedlers; meanwhile he told a story about
visions, which had reference to a crack in the
clock-case made by frost one night. He was
curious to know to what religious sect we be-
longed. He said that he had been to hear thir-
teen kinds of preaching in one month, when he
was young, but he did not join any of them, —
he stuck to his Bible. There was nothing like
any of them in his Bible. While I was shaving
in the next room, I heard him ask my com-
panion to what sect he belonged, to which he
answered : —

"O, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood."
"What's that.?" he asked, "Sons o' Tem-
perance.'^"

Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts,
which he was pleased to find that we called by
the same name that he did, and paying for our
entertainment, we took our departure; but he
followed us out of doors, and made us tell him
the names of the vegetables which he had raised
from seeds that came out of the Franklin. They
were cabbage, broccoli, and parsley. As I had
asked him the names of so many things, he tried
me in turn with all the plants which grew in his
garden, both wild and cultivated. It was about

116 CAPE COD

half an acre, which he cultivated wholly himself.
Besides the common garden vegetables, there
were Yellow-Dock, Lemon Balm, Hyssop, Gill-
go-over-the-ground. Mouse-ear, Chick-weed,
Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other
plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk
stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.

"There," said I, "he has got a fish."

"Well," said the old man, who was looking all
the while, but could see nothing, "he didn't
dive, he just wet his claws."

And, sure enough, he did not this time, though
it is said that they often do, but he merely stooped
low enough to pick him out with his talons ; but
as he bore his shining prey over the bushes, it
fell to the ground, and we did not see that he
recovered it. That is not their practice.

Thus, having had another crack with the old
man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves,
he directed us "athwart the fields," and we took
to the beach again for another day, it being now
late in the morning.

It was but a day or two after this that the safe
of the Provincetown Bank was broken open and
robbed by two men from the interior, and we
learned that our hospitable entertainers did at
least transiently harbor the suspicion that we
were the men.

VI

THE BEACH AGAIN

OUR way to the high sand-bank, which I
have described as extending all along the
coast, led, as usual, through patches of
Bay berry bushes which straggled into the sand.
This, next to the Shrub-oak, was perhaps the
most common shrub thereabouts. I was much
attracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray
berries which are clustered about the short twigs,
just below the last year's growth. I know of but
two bushes in Concord, and they, being stami-
nate plants, do not bear fruit. The berries gave
it a venerable appearance, and they smelled quite
spicy, like small confectionery. Robert Beverley,
in his "History of Virginia," published in 1705,
states that "at the mouth of their rivers, and all
along upon the sea and bay, and near many of
their creeks and swamps, grows the myrtle, bear-
ing a berry, of which they make a hard brittle
wax, of a curious green color, which by refining
becomes almost transparent. Of this they make
candles, which are never greasy to the touch nor
melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither
does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like
that of a tallow candle ; but, instead of being disa-

118 CAPE COD

greeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields
a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room ;
insomuch that nice people often put them out on
purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff.
The melting of these berries is said to have been
first found out by a surgeon in New England, who
performed wonderful things with a salve made of
them." From the abundance of berries still
hanging on the bushes, we judged that the inhabi-
tants did not generally collect them for tallow,
though we had seen a piece in the house we had
.just left. I have since made some tallow myself.
Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs in April,
I rubbed them together between my hands and
thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes,
to which were added enough to make three pints,
and I might have gathered them much faster
with a suitable rake and a large shallow basket.
They have little prominences like those of an
orange all creased in tallow, which also fills the
interstices down to the stone. The oily part rose
to the top, making it look like a savory black
broth, which smelled much like balm or other
herb tea. You let it cool, then skim off the tallow
from the surface, melt this again and strain it.
I got about a quarter of a pound weight from my
three pints, and more yet remained within the
berries. A small portion cooled in the form of
small flattish hemispheres, like crystallizations,
the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them

THE BEACH AGAIN 119

as I picked them out from amid the berries),
Loudon says, that "cultivated trees are said to
yield more wax than those that are found wild."
(See Duplessy, Vegetaux Resineux, Vol. II. p. 60.)
If you get any pitch on your hands in the pine-
woods you have only to rub some of these ber-
ries between your hands to start it off. But
the ocean was the grand fact there, which made
us forget both bay berries and men.

To-day the air was beautifully clear, and the
sea no longer dark and stormy, though the waves
still broke with foam along the beach, but spark-
ling and full of life. Already that morning I had
seen the day break over the sea as if it came out
of its bosom : —

"The safiFron-robed Dawn rose in haste from the streams
Of Ocean, that she might bring light to immortals and to
mortals."

The sun rose visibly at such a distance over the
sea that the cloud-bank in the horizon, which at
first concealed him, was not perceptible until he
had risen high behind it, and plainly broke and
dispersed it, like an arrow. But as yet I looked
at him as rising over land, and could not, without
an effort, realize that he was rising over the sea.
Already I saw some vessels on the horizon, which
had rounded the Cape in the night, and were now
well on their watery way to other lands.

We struck the beach again in the south part of

120 CAPE COD

Truro. In the early part of the day, while it was
flood tide and the beach was narrow and soft,
we walked on the bank, which was very high
here, but not so level as the day before, being
more interrupted by slight hollows. The author
of the Description of the Eastern Coast says of
this part, that "the bank is very high and steep.
From the edge of it west, there is a strip of sand
a hundred yards in breadth. Then succeeds low
brushwood, a quarter of a mile wide, and almost
impassable. After which comes a thick, perplex-
ing forest, in which not a house is to be discovered.
Seamen, therefore, though the distance between
these two hollows (Newcomb's and Brush Hol-
lows) is great, must not attempt to enter the
wood, as in a snowstorm they must undoubtedly
perish." This is still a true description of the
country, except that there is not much high wood
left.

There were many vessels, like gulls, skimming
over the surface of the sea, now half concealed
in its troughs, their dolphin-strikers ploughing
the water, now tossed on the top of the billows.
One, a bark standing down parallel with the
coast, suddenly furled her sails, came to anchor,
and swung round in the wind, near us, only half
a mile from the shore. At first we thought that
her captain wished to communicate with us, and
perhaps we did not regard the signal of distress,
which a mariner would have understood, and he

THE BEACH AGAIN 121

cursed us for cold-hearted wreckers who turned
our backs on him. For hours we could still see
her anchored there behind us, and we wondered
how she could afford to loiter so long in her course.
Or was she a smuggler who had chosen that wild
beach to land her cargo on ? Or did they wish to
catch fish, or paint their vessel ? Erelong other
barks, and brigs, and schooners, which had in
the mean while doubled the Cape, sailed by her
in the smacking: breeze, and our consciences were
relieved. Some of these vessels lagged behind,
while others steadily went ahead. We narrowly
watched their rig, and the cut of their jibs, and
how they walked the water, for there was all the
difference between them that there is between
living creatures. But we wondered that they
should be remembering Boston and New York
and Liverpool, steering for them, out there; as
if the sailor might forget his peddling business
on such a grand highway. They had perchance
brought orano:es from the Western Isles; and
were they carrying back the peel ? We might as
well transport our old traps across the ocean of
eternity. Is that but another "trading-flood,"
with its blessed isles ? Is Heaven such a harbor
as the Liverpool docks ?

Still held on without a break, the inland bar-
rens and shrubberv, the desert and the high sand-
bank with its even slope, the broad white beach,
the breakers, the green water on the bar, and the

122 CAPE COD

Atlantic Ocean; and we traversed with delight
new reaches of the shore ; we took another lesson
in sea-horses' manes and sea-cows' tails, in sea-
jellies and sea-clams, with our new-gained expe-
rience. The sea ran hardly less than the day
before. It seemed with every wave to be sub-
siding, because such was our expectation, and
yet when hours had elapsed we could see no dif-
ference. But there it was, balancing itself, the
restless ocean by our side, lurching in its gait.
Each wave left the sand all braided or woven, as
it were, with a coarse woof and warp, and a dis-
tinct raised edge to its rapid work. We made no
haste, since we wished to see the ocean at our
leisure ; and indeed that soft sand was no place in
which to be in a hurry, for one mile there was as
good as two elsewhere. Besides, we were obliged
frequently to empty our shoes of the sand which
one took in in climbing or descending the bank.

As we were walking close to the water's edge
this morning we turned round, by chance, and
saw a large black object which the waves had
just cast up on the beach behind us, yet too far
off for us to distinguish what it was ; and when
we were about to return to it, two men came
running from the bank, where no human beings
had appeared before, as if they had come out of
the sand, in order to save it before another wave
took it. As we approached, it took successively
the form of a huge fish, a drowned man, a sail or

THE BEACH AGAIN 123

a net, and finally of a mass of tow-cloth, part of
the cargo of the Franklin, which the men loaded
into a cart.

Objects on the beach, whether men or inani-
mate things, look not only exceedingly grotesque,
but much larger and more wonderful than they
actually are. Lately, when approaching the sea-
shore several degrees south of this, I saw before
me, seemingly half a mile distant, what appeared
like bold and rugged cliffs on the beach, fifteen
feet high, and whitened by the sun and waves ;
but after a few steps it proved to be low heaps of
rags, — part of the cargo of a wrecked vessel, —
scarcely more than a foot in height. Once also
it was my business to go in search of the relics of
a human body, mangled by sharks, which had just
been cast up, a week after a wreck, having got the
direction from a light-house: I should find it a
mile or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods
from the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick
stuck up. I expected that I must look very nar-
rowly to find so small an object, but the sandy
beach, half a mile wide, and stretching farther
than the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth
and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so mag-
nifying, that when I was half a mile distant the
insignificant sliver which marked the spot looked
like a bleached spar, and the relics were as con-
spicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy
plain, or a generation had labored to pile up their

124 CAPE COD

cairn there. Close at hand they were simply
some bones with a little flesh adhering to them,
in fact, only a slight inequality in the sweep of
the shore. There was nothing at all remarkable
about them, and they were singularly inoffensive
both to the senses and the imagination. But as I
stood there they grew more and more imposing.
They were alone with the beach and the sea,
whose hollow roar seemed addressed to them,
and I was impressed as if there was an under-
standincr between them and the ocean which
necessarily left me out, with my snivelling sym-
pathies. That dead body had taken possession of
the shore, and reigned over it as no living one,
could, in the name of a certain majesty which
belonged to it.

We afterward saw many small pieces of tow-
cloth washed up, and I learn that it continued
to be found in good condition, even as late as
November in that year, half a dozen bolts at a
time.

We eagerly filled our pockets with the smooth
round pebbles which in some places, even here,
were thinly sprinkled over the sand, together with
flat circular shells {Scutelloe?) ; but, as we had
read, when they were dry they had lost their
beauty, and at each sitting we emptied our pock-
ets again of the least remarkable, until our col-
lection was well culled. Every material was
rolled into the pebble form by. the waves; not

THE BEACH AGAIN 125

only stones of various kinds, but the hard coal
which some vessel had dropped, bits of glass,
and in one instance a mass of peat three feet long,
where there was nothing like it to be seen for
many miles. All the great rivers of the globe are
annually, if not constantly, discharging great
quantities of lumber, which drifts to distant
shores. I have also seen very perfect pebbles of
brick, and bars of Castile soap from a wreck
rolled into perfect cylinders, and still spirally
streaked with red, like a barber's pole. When a
cargo of rags is washed ashore, every old pocket
and bag-like recess will be filled to bursting with
sand by being rolled on the beach; and on one
occasion, the pockets in the clothing of the wrecked
being thus puffed up, even after they had been
ripped open by wreckers, deluded me into the
hope of identifying them by the contents. A pair
of gloves looked exactly as if filled by a hand.
The water in such clothing is soon wrung out and
evaporated, but the sand, which works itself into
every seam, is not so easily got rid of. Sponges,
which are picked up on the shore, as is well
known, retain some of the sand of the beach to
the latest day, in spite of every effort to extract
it.

I found one stone on the top of the bank, of a
dark gray color, shaped exactly like a giant clam
(Mactra solidissima) , and of the same size ; and,
what was more remarkable, one-half of the out-

156 CAPE COD

side had shelled off and hiy near it, of the same
form and depth with one of the valves of this
clam, while the other half was loose, leaving a
solid core of a darker color within it. I after-
ward saw a stone resemblinor a razor clam, but
it was a solid one. It appeared as if tlie stone, in
the process of formation, had tilled the mould
which a clam-shell furnished ; or the same law
that shaped the clam had made a clam of stone.
Dead clams, with shells full of sand, are called
sand clams. There were manv of the laro^e clam-
shells tilled with sand ; and sometimes one valve
was separately filled exactly even, as if it had
been heaped and then scraped. Even, among
the many small stones on the top of the bank, I
found one arrow-head.

Beside the ijiant clam and barnacles, we found
on the shore a small clam {Mcsodcsma arciata),
which I duo: with mv hands in numbers on the
bars, and which is sometimes eaten bv the inliabi-
tants, in the absence of the Mi/a arcuaria, on this
side. Most of their empty shells had been per-
forated bv some foe. — Also, the

Astartc casfanea.

The Edible Mussel (Mj/tilus edidis) on the few
rocks, and washed up in curious bunches of forty
or fifty, held together by its rope-like bijssus.

The Scollop Shell {Pcctcn concent ricu^), used
for card-racks and pin-cushions.

Cockles, or Cuckoos {Xatica heros), and their

THE BEACH AGAIN 127

remarkable nidus, called ''sand-circle," looking
like the top of a stone jug without the stopple,
and broken on one side, or like a flaring dickey
made of sand-paper. x\lso,

Canccllaria CoutJiouyi (?), and

Periwinkles (?) {Fiisus dcccmcostatus).

We afterward saw some other kinds on the
Bay-side. Gould states that this Cape "has
hitlierto proved a barrier to the migrations of
many species of MoUusca." — "Of the one hun-
dred and ninety-seven species [which he described
in 1840 as belonging to Massachusetts], eighty-
three do not pass to the South shore, and fifty
are not found on the North shore of the Cape."

Among Crustacea, there were the shells of
Crabs and Lobsters, often bleached quite white
high up the beach; Sea or Beach Fleas {Amphi-
poda) ; and the cases of the Horse-shoe Crab, or
Saucepan Fish (Limulus PoIi/ph(Tmus), of which
we saw many alive on the Bay side, where they
feed pigs on them. Their tails were used as
arrow-heads bv the Indians.

Of Radiata, there were the Sea Chestnut or
Egg {Echinus granulaius), commonly divested of
its spines; flat circular shells {Scutella parma?)
covered with chocolate-colored spines, but be-
coming smooth and white, with five petal-like
figures; a few Star-fishes or Five-fingers (As-
tcrias ruben^) ; and Sun-fishes or Sea-jellies
(Aurelioe).

128 CAPE COD

There was also at least one species of Sponge.

The plants which I noticed here and there on
the pure sandy shelf, between the ordinary high-
water mark and the foot of the bank, were Sea
Rocket {Cakile Americana), Saltwort {Salsola
kali). Sea Sandwort {Honkenya pcploides). Sea
Burdock (Xanthium cchinatum). Sea-side Spurge
{Euphorbia pobjgonifolia) ; also. Beach Grass
{Arundo, Psainma, or Calamagrosiis arcnaria).
Sea-side Golden-rod {Solidago sempervirens)^
and the Beach Pea {LatJii/rus maritimus).

Sometimes we helped a wrecker turn over a
larger log than usual, or we amused ourselves
with rolling stones down the bank, but we rarelv
could make one reach the water, the beach was
so soft and wide ; or we bathed in some shallow
within a bar, where the sea covered us with sand
at every flux, though it was quite cold and windy.
The ocean there is commonlv but a tantalizino:
prospect in hot weather, for with all that water
before you, there is, as we were afterward told,
no bathing on the Atlantic side, on account of the
undertow and the rumor of sharks. At the light-
house both in Eastham and Truro, the only
houses quite on the shore, they declared, the next
year, that they would not bathe there "for any
sum," for they sometimes saw the sharks tossed
up and quiver for a moment on the sand. Others
laughed at these stories, but perhaps they could
afford to because they never bathed anywhere.

THE BEACH AGAIN 129

One old wrecker told us that he killed a regular
man-eating shark fourteen feet long, and hauled
him out with his oxen, where we had bathed;
and another, that his father caught a smaller one
of the same kind that was stranded there, by
standing him up on his snout so that the waves
could not take him. They will tell you tough sto-
ries of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not
presume to doubt utterly, — how they will some-
times upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at
the man in it. I can easily believe in the under-
tow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a
dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation
of a beach a hundred miles long. I should add,
however, that in July we walked on the bank
here a quarter of a mile parallel with a fish about
six feet in length, possibly a shark, which was
prowling slowly along within two rods of the
shore. It was of a pale brown color, singularly
film-like and indistinct in the water, as if all na-
ture abetted this child of ocean, and showed
many darker transverse bars or rings whenever
it came to the surface. It is well known that dif-
ferent fishes even of the same species are colored
by the water they inhabit. We saw it go into a
little cove or bathing-tub, where we had just been
bathing, where the water was only four or five
feet deep at that time, and after exploring it go
slowly out again; but we continued to bathe
there, only observing first from the bank if the

130 CAPE COD

cove was preoccupied. We thought that the
water was fuller of life, more aerated perhaps
than that of the Bay, like soda-water, for we
were as particular as young salmon, and the ex-
pectation of encountering a shark did not sub-
tract an\'thin£r from its life-o;ivino; qualities.

Sometimes we sat on the wet beach and
watched the beach birds, sand-pipers, and others,
trotting along close to each wave, and waiting for
the sea to cast up their breakfast. The former
{Charadrius melodus) ran with great rapidity and
then stood stock still remarkably erect and
hardlv to be distino:uished from the beach. The
wet sand was covered with small skipping Sea
Fleas, which apparently make a part of their
food. These last are the little scavengers of the
beach, and are so numerous that they will devour
large fishes, which have been cast up, in a very
short time. One little bird not larcrer than a
sparrow, — it may have been a Phalarope. —
would alight on the turbulent surface where the
breakers were five or six feet hijjli, and float buov-
antlv there like a duck, cunninoflv takiuir to its
wincrs and liftinor itself a few feet throuijh the air
over the foaming crest of each breaker, but some-
times outridino; safelv a considerable billow which
hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that
it would not break. It was a little creature thus
to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a
success in its way as the breakers in theirs. There

THE BEACH AGAIN 131

was also an almost uninterrupted line of coots
risinor and fallino; with the waves, a few rods from
the shore, the whole length of the Cape. They
made as constant a part of the ocean's border as
the pads or pickerel-weed do of that of a pond.
We read the following as to the Storm Petrel
{Thalassidroma Wihofiii), which is seen in the
Bay as well as on the outside. "The feathers on
the breast of the Storm Petrel are, like those of
all swimming birds, water-proof; but substances
not susceptible of being wetted with water are,
for that very reason, the best fitted for collectinor
oil from its surface. That function is performed
by the feathers on the breast of the Storm Petrels
as they touch on the surface; and though that
may not be the only way in which they procure
their food, it is certainly that in which they ob-
tain great part of it. They dash along till they
have loaded their feathers and then they pause
upon the wave and remove the oil with their
bills."

Thus we kept on along the gently curving
shore, seeing two or three miles ahead at once, —
along this ocean side-walk, where there was none
to turn out for, with the middle of the road the
hio-hwav of nations on our rio^ht. and the sand
clilfs of the Cape on our left. We saw this fore-
noon a part of the wreck of a vessel, probably the
Franklin, a large piece fifteen feet square, and
still freshly painted. With a grapple and a line

132 CAPE COD

we could have saved it, for the waves repeatedly
washed it within cast, but they as often took it
back. It would have been a lucky haul for some
poor wrecker, for I have been told that one man
who paid three or four dollars for a part of the
wreck of that vessel, sold fifty or sixty dollars'
worth of iron out of it. Another, the same who
picked up the Captain's valise with the memo-
rable letter in it, showed me, growing in his gar-
den, many pear and plum trees which washed
ashore from her, all nicely tied up and labelled,
and he said that he might have got five hundred
dollars' worth ; for a Mr. Bell was importing the
nucleus of a nursery to be established near
Boston. His turnip-seed came from the same
source. Also valuable spars from the same
vessel and from the Cactus lay in his yard. In
short the inhabitants visit the beach to see what
they have caught as regularly as a fisherman his
weir or a lumberer his boom ; the Cape is their
boom. I heard of one who had recently picked
up twenty barrels of apples in good condition,
probably a part of a deck load thrown over in a
storm.

Though there are wreck-masters appointed to
look after valuable property which must be ad-
vertised, yet undoubtedly a great deal of value is
secretly carried off. But are we not all wreckers
contriving that some treasure may be washed up
on our beach, that we may secure it, and do we

THE BEACH AGAIN 133

not infer the habits of these Nauset and Barnegat
wreckers from the common modes of getting a
living ?

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the
waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest
shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit
up. It lets nothing lie ; not even the giant clams
which cling to its bottom. It is still heaving up
the tow-cloth of the Franklin, and perhaps a
piece of some old pirate's ship, wrecked more
than a hundred years ago, comes ashore to-day.
Some years since, when a vessel was wrecked
here which had nutmegs in her cargo, they were
strewn all along the beach, and for a considera-
ble time were not spoiled by the salt water. Soon
afterward, a fisherman caught a cod which was
full of them. Why, then, might not the Spice-
Islanders shake their nutmeg trees into the ocean,
and let all nations who stand in need of them pick
them up ? However, after a year, I found that
the nutmegs from the Franklin had become soft.

You might make a curious list of articles which
fishes have swallowed, — sailors' open clasp-
knives, and bright tin snuff-boxes, not knowing
what was in them, — and jugs, and jewels, and
Jonah. The other day I came across the follow-
ing scrap in a newspaper.

" A Religious Fish. — A short time ago, mine host
Stewart, of the Denton Hotel, purchased a rock-fish,
weighing about sixty pounds. On opening it he found

134 CAPE COD

in it a certificate of membership of the M. E. Church,

which we read as follows : —

Member
Methodist E. Church.
Founded A. D. 1784.
Quarterly Ticket. IS

Minister.

'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' — "i Cor.
iv. 17.

' O what are all my sufferings here.
If. Lord, thou count me meet
With that enraptured host t' appear.
And worship at thy feet ! '

'* The paper was of course in a crumpled and wet
condition, but on exposing it to the sun. and ironing the
kinks out of it. it became quite legible. — Dcntcm {Md.)
Journal."

From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves,
a box or barrel, and set it on its end, and appro-
priated it with crossed sticks; and it will lie
there perhaps, respected bv brother wreckers,
until some more violent storm shall take it, reallv
lost to man until wrecked again. We also saved,
at the cost of wet feet only, a valuable cord and
buoy, part of a seine, with which the sea was
playing, for it seemed ungracious to refuse the
least gift which so great a personage ottered you.
We brought this home and still use it for a crarden
line. I picked up a bottle half buried in the wet
sand, covered with barnacles, but stoppled tight,

THE BEACH AGAIN 135

and half fiill of red ale, which still smacked of
juniper, — all that remained I fancied from the
wreck of a rowdy world, — that great salt sea on
the one hand, and this little sea of ale on the
other, preserving their separate characters. Wliat
if it could tell us its adventures over countless
ocean waves ! Man would not be man through
such ordeals as it had passed. But as I poured
it slowlv out on to the sand, it seemed to me that
man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of
pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stop-
pled tight for a while, and drifting about in the
ocean of circumstances ; but destined erelong
to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be
spilled amid the sands of a distant shore.

In the summer I saw two men fishing for Bass
hereabouts. Their bait was a bullfrog, or several
small frogs in a bunch, for want of squid. They
followed a retiring wave and whirling their lines
round and round their heads with increasing
rapidity, threw them as far as they could into the
sea ; then retreating, sat down, flat on the sand,
and waited for a bite. It was literally (or lit-
torallij) walking down to the shore, and throwing
vour line into the Atlantic. I should not have
known what might take hold of the other end,
whether Proteus or another. At any rate, if you
could not pull him in, why, you might let him go
without being pulled in yourself. And they knew
by experience that it would be a Striped Bass, or

136 CAPE COD

perhaps a Cod, for these fishes play along near
the shore.

From time to time we sat under the lee of a
sand-hill on the bank, thinly covered with coarse
Beach-grass, and steadily gazed on the sea, or
watched the vessels going south, all Blessings of
the Bay of course. We could see a little more
than half a circle of ocean, besides the glimpses of
the Bay which we got behind us; the sea there
was not wild and dreary in all respects, for there
were frequently a hundred sail in sight at once on
the Atlantic. You can commonly count about
eighty in a favorable summer day and pilots
sometimes land and ascend the bank to look out
for these which require their services. These
had been waiting for fair weather, and had come
out of Boston Harbor together. The same is
the case when they have been assembled in the
Vineyard Sound, so that you may see but few one
day, and a large fleet the next. Schooners with
many jibs and stay-sails crowded all the sea
road; square-rigged vessels with their great
height and breadth of canvas were ever and anon
appearing out of the far horizon, or disappearing
and sinking into it; here and there a pilot-boat
was towing its little boat astern toward some
distant foreigner who had just fired a gun, the
echo of which along the shore sounded like the
caving of the bank. We could see the pilot look-
ing through his glass toward the distant ship

W

.«^«^'^.

Unloaditig the day' s catch

THE BEACH AGAIN 137

which was putting back to speak with him. He
sails many a mile to meet her ; and now she puts
her sails aback, and communicates with him
alongside, — sends some important message to
the owners, and then bids farewell to these
shores for good and all ; or, perchance a pro-
peller passed and made fast to some disabled
craft, or one that had been becalmed, whose
cargo of fruit might spoil. Though silently, and
for the most part incommunicatively, going about
their business, they were, no doubt, a source of
cheerfulness and a kind of society to one another.
To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which
I should not before have accepted. There were
distinct patches of the color of a purple grape
with the bloom rubbed off. But first and last the
sea is of all colors. Well writes Gilpin concern-
ing "the brilliant hues which are continually
playing on the surface of a quiet ocean," and this
was not too turbulent at a distance from the
shore. "Beautiful," says he, "no doubt in a high
degree are those glimmering tints which often
invest the tops of mountains ; but they are mere
coruscations compared with these marine colors,
which are continually varying and shifting into
each other in all the vivid splendor of the rain-
bow, through the space often of several leagues."
Commonly, in calm weather, for half a mile from
the shore, where the bottom tinges it, the sea is
green, or greenish, as are some ponds ; then blue

138 CAPE COD

for many miles, often with purple tinges, bounded
in the distance by a light almost silvery stripe;
beyond which there is generally a dark-blue rim,
like a mountain-ridge in the horizon, as if, like
that, it owed its color to the intervening atmos-
phere. On another day it will be marked with
long streaks, alternately smooth and rippled,
light-colored and dark, even like our inland
meadows in a freshet, and showing which way
the wind sets.

Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on
the wine-colored ocean, —

©tV C<^' dXoS TToXt^S, OpOWV CTTl o'vOTTa TTOVTOV.

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface,
the shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so
clear that no cloud would have been noticed
otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen
on the land, where a much smaller surface is
visible at once. So, distant clouds and showers
may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course
of a day, which do not necessarily portend rain
where he is. In July we saw similar dark-blue
patches where schools of Menhaden rippled the
surface, scarcely to be distinguished from the
shadows of clouds. Sometimes the sea was
spotted with them far and wide, such is its inex-
haustible fertility. Close at hand you see their
back fin, which is very long and sharp, projecting
two or three inches above water. From time to

THE BEACH AGAIN 139

time also we saw the white bellies of the Bass
playing along the shore.

It was a poetic recreation to watch those dis-
tant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose
very names are a mysterious music to our ears:
Fayal, and Babelmandel, ay, and Chagres, and
Panama, — bound to the famous Bay of San
Francisco, and the golden streams of Sacramento
and San Joaquin, to Feather River and the
American Fork, where Sutter's Fort presides,
and inland stands the City de los Angeles. It is
remarkable that men do not sail the sea with
more expectation. Nothing remarkable was
ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The
heroes and discoverers have found true more
than was previously believed, only when they
were expecting and dreaming of something more
than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even
themselves discovered, that is, when they were in
a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Re-
ferred to the world's standard, they are always
insane. Even savages have indirectly surmised
as much. Humboldt, speaking of Columbus
approaching the New World, says: "The grate-
ful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity
of the starry firmament, the balmy fragrance of
flowers, wafted to him by the land breeze, all led
him to suppose (as we are told by Herrara, in the
Decades) that he was approaching the garden of
Eden, the sacred abode of our first parents. The

140 CAPE COD

Orinoco seemed to him one of the four rivers
which, according to the venerable tradition of
the ancient world, flowed from Paradise, to water
and divide the surface of the earth, newly adorned
with plants." So even the expeditions for the
discovery of El Dorado, and of the Fountain
of Youth, led to real, if not compensatory
discoveries.

We discerned vessels so far off, when once we
began to look, that only the tops of their masts in
the horizon were visible, and it took a strong in-
tention of the eye, and its most favorable side, to
see them at all, and sometimes we doubted if we
were not counting our eyelashes. Charles Dar-
win states that he saw, from the base of the
Andes, "the masts of the vessels at anchor in the
bay of Valparaiso, although not less than twenty-
six geographical miles distant," and that Anson
had been surprised at the distance at which his
vessels were discovered from the coast, without
knowing the reason, namely, the great height of
the land and the transparency of the air. Steam-
ers may be detected much farther than sailing
vessels, for, as one says, when their hulls and
masts of wood and iron are down, their smoky
masts and streamers still betray them; and the
same writer, speaking of the comparative ad-
vantages of bituminous and anthracite coal for
war-steamers, states that, "from the ascent of
the columns of smoke above the horizon, the

THE BEACH AGAIN 141

motions of the steamers in Calais Harbor [on the
coast of France] are at all times observable at
Ramsgate [on the English coast], from the first
lighting of the fires to the putting out at sea ; and
that in America the steamers burning the fat
bituminous coal can be tracked at sea at least
seventy miles before the hulls become visible,
by the dense columns of black smoke pouring
out of their chimneys, and trailing along the
horizon."

Though there were numerous vessels at this
great distance in the horizon on every side, yet
the vast spaces between them, like the spaces
between the stars, far as they were distant from
us, so were they from one another, — nay, some
were twice as far from each other as from us, —
impressed us with a sense of the immensity of
the ocean, the "unfruitful ocean," as it has been
called, and we could see what proportion man
and his works bear to the globe. As we looked
off, and saw the water growing darker and
darker and deeper and deeper the farther we
looked, till it was awful to consider, and it ap-
peared to have no relation to the friendly land,
either as shore or bottom, — of what use is a bot-
tom if it is out of sight, if it is two or three miles
from the surface, and you are to be drowned so
long before you get to it, though it were made of
the same stuff with your native soil ? — over that
ocean, where, as the Veda says, ' 'there is nothing

142 CAPE COD

to give support, nothing to rest upon, nothing to
cling to," I felt that I was a land animal. The
man in a balloon even may commonly alight on
the earth in a few moments, but the sailor's only
hope is that he may reach the distant shore. I
could then appreciate the heroism of the old
navigator. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, of whom it is
related that, being overtaken by a storm when
on his return from America, in the year 1583,
far northeastward from where we were, sittino;
abaft with a book in his hand, just before he was
swallowed up in the deep, he cried out to his
comrades in the Hind, as they came within hear-
ing, "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by
land." I saw that it would not be easy to realize.
On Cape Cod, the next most eastern land you
hear of is St. George's Bank (the fishermen tell
of "Georges," "Cashus," and other sunken
lands which they frequent). Every Cape man
has a theory about George's Bank having been
an island once, and in their accounts they gradu-
ally reduce the shallowness from six, five, four,
two fathoms, to somebody's confident assertion
that he has seen a mackerel-gull sitting; on a
piece of dry land there. It reminded me, when I
thought of the shipwrecks which had taken place
there, of the Isle of Demons, laid down off this
coast in old charts of the New World. There
must be something monstrous, methinks, in a
vision of the sea bottom from over some bank a

THE BEACH AGAIN 143

thousand miles from the shore, more awful than
its imagined bottomlessness ; a drowned conti-
nent, all livid and frothing at the nostrils, like the
body of a drowned man, which is better sunk
deep than near the surface.

I have been surprised to discover from a
steamer the shallowness of Massachusetts Bay
itself. Off Billingsgate Point I could have
touched the bottom with a pole, and I plainly
saw it variously shaded with sea- weed, at five or
six miles from the shore. This is "The Shoal-
ground of the Cape," it is true, but elsewhere the
bay is not much deeper than a country pond. We
are told that the deepest water in the English
Channel between Shakespeare's Cliff and Cape
Grinez, in France, is one hundred and eighty
feet; and Guyot says that "the Baltic Sea has a
depth of only one hundred and twenty feet be-
tween the coasts of Germany and those of Swe-
den," and "the Adriatic between Venice and
Trieste has a depth of only one hundred and
thirty feet." A pond in my native town, only
half a mile long, is more than one hundred feet
deep.

The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer
you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smooth-
ness on it, a few rods in width and many miles
long, as if the surface there were covered with a
thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond ; a
sort of stand-still, you would say, at the meeting

144 CAPE COD

or parting of two currents of air (if it does not
rather mark the unrippled steadiness of a current
of water beneath) , for sailors tell of the ocean and
land breeze meeting between the fore and aft
sails of a vessel, while the latter are full, the for-
mer being suddenly taken aback. Daniel Web-
ster, in one of his letters describing blue-fishing
off Martha's Vineyard, referring to those smooth
places, which fishermen and sailors call "slicks,"
says: "We met with them yesterday, and our
boatman made for them, whenever discovered.
He said they were caused by the blue-fish chop-
ping up their prey. That is to say, those vora-
cious fellows get into a school of menhaden, which
are too large to swallow whole, and they bite
them into pieces to suit their tastes. And the oil
from this butchery, rising to the surface, makes
the 'slick.'"

Yet this same placid Ocean, as civil now as a
city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce,
will erelong be lashed into sudden fury, and all
its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It
will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro,
break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws,
and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will
play with them like sea- weed, distend them like
dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now
low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble.
This gentle Ocean will toss and tear the rag of a
man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his

THE BEACH AGAIN 145

relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for
weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland
hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard-
of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor
has recently been buried amid the sandhills.

It is generally supposed that they who have
long been conversant with the Ocean can fore-
tell by certain indications, such as its roar and
the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from
calm to storm ; but probably no such ancient
mariner as we dream of exists; they know no
more, at least, than the older sailors do about
this voyage of life on which we are all embarked.
Nevertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old
sailors, and their accounts of natural phenomena,
which totally ignore, and are ignored by, science ;
and possibly they have not always looked over the
gunwale so long in vain. Kalm repeats a story
which was told him in Philadelphia by a Mr.
Cock, who was one day sailing to the West In-
dies in a small yacht, with an old man on board
who was well acquainted with those seas. "The
old man sounding the depth, called to the mate
to tell Mr. Cock to launch the boats immediately,
and to put a sufficient number of men into them,
in order to tow the yacht during the calm, that
they might reach the island before them as soon
as possible, as within twenty-four hours there
would be a strong hurricane. Mr. Cock asked
him what reasons he had to think so; the old

10

146 CAPE COD

man replied tliat. on sounding, he saw the lead
in the water at a distance of manv fathoms more
than he had seen it before; that therefore the
water was become clear all of a sudden, which
he looked upon as a certain sign of an impending
hurricane in the sea."" The sequel of the storv
is that, bv crood fortune and bv dint of rowinof.
thev manaofed to f^ain a safe harbor before the
hurricane had reached its heio-ht; but it iinallv
rao;ed with so much violence that not onlv manv
ships were lost and houses unroofed, but even
their own vessel in harbor was washed so far on
shore that several weeks elapsed before it could
be got off.

The Greeks would not have called the ocean
aTpvy€To<;. or unfruitful, though it does not pro-
duce wheat, if thev had viewed it bv the liirht of
modern science ; for naturalists now assert that
"the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat
of life," — though not of vegetable life. Darwin
affirms that "our most thicklv inhabited forests
appear almost as deserts when we come to com-
pare them with the corresponding regions of the
ocean." Agassiz and Gould tell us that "the sea
teems with animals of all classes, far bevond the
extreme point of flowering plants"; but they
add that "experiments of dredging in very deep
water have also taught us that the abvss of the
ocean is nearlv a desert"; — "so that modern
investigations," to quote the words of Desor,

THE BEACH AGAIN 147

*' merely go to confirm the s^reat idea which was
vaguely anticipated bv the ancient poets and
philosophers, that the Ocean is the origin of all
things." Yet marine animals and plants hold a
lower rank in the scale of being than land animals
and plants. "There is no instance known," says
Desor, "of an animal becoming aquatic in its
perfect state, after having lived in its lower stage
on dry land." but as in the case of the tadpole,
"the progress invariably points towards the dry
land." In short, the drv land itself came throuirh
and out of the water in its wav to the heavens,
for, "in cjoino: back tlirouojh the cr^olosfical ages,
we come to an epoch when, according to all ap-
pearances, the dry land did not exist, and when
the surface of our cjlobe was entirelv covered with
water." We looked on the sea, then, once more,
not as a7piryero9, or unfruitful, but as it has been
more trulv called, the "laboratory of continents."
Though we have indulged in some placid re-
flections of late, the reader must not foro^et that
the dash and roar of the waves were incessant.
Indeed, it would be well if he were to read with a
large conch-shell at his ear. But notwithstaud-
inor that it was verv cold and windv to-dav, it
was such a cold as we thouo:ht would not cause
one to take cold who was exposed to it, owing to
the saltness of the air and the drvness of the soil.
Yet the author of the old Description of Wellfleet
says: "The atmosphere is very much impreg-

US CAPE COD

nated with saline particles, which, perhaps, with
the o:reat use of tisli, and the nei::lect of cider and
spruce-beer, may be a reason why the people are
more subject to sore mouths antl throats than in
other places."

VII
ACROSS THE CAPE

WHEN we have returned from the sea-
side, we sometimes ask ourselves why
we did not spend more time in gazing
at the sea; but very soon the traveller does not
look as the sea more than at the heavens. As for
the interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst
of the ocean can be said to have any interior,
it was an exceedingly desolate landscape, with
rarely a cultivated or cultivable field in sight.
We saw no villages, and seldom a house, for
these are generally on the Bay side. It was a
succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now
wearing an autumnal tint. You would frequently
think, from the character of the surface, the
dwarfish trees, and the bearberries around, that
you were on the top of a mountain. The only
wood in Eastham was on the edge of Wellfleet.
The pitch-pines were not commonly more than
fifteen or eighteen feet high. The larger ones
covered with lichens, — often liuno; with the
long gray Usnca. There is scarcely a white-pine
on the forearm of the Cape. Yet in the north-
west part of Eastham, near the Camp Ground,
we saw, the next summer, some quite rural, and

150 CAPE COD

even sylvan retreats, for the Cape, where small
rustling groves of oaks and locusts and whisper-
ing pines, on perfectly level ground, made a little
paradise. The locusts, both transplanted and
growing naturally about the houses there, ap-
peared to flourish better than any other tree.
There were thin belts of wood in Wellfleet and
Truro, a mile or more from the Atlantic, but.
for the most part, we could see the horizon
through them. or. if extensive, the trees were not
large. Both oaks and pines had often the same
.flat look with the apple-trees. Commonly, the
oak woods twentv-tive vears old were a mere
scra2:2:v shrubbery nine or ten feet hiirh. and we
could frequently reach to their topmost leaf.
Much that is called "woods" was about half as
hio^h as this. — onlv patches of shrub-oak, bav-
berr^". beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun with
woodbine. Wlien the roses were in bloom, these
patches in the midst of the sand displayed such
a profusion of blossoms, mingled with the
aroma of the bavberrv. that no Italian or other
artificial rose-garden could equal them. They
were perfectly Elysian, and realized my idea of
an oasis in the desert. Iluckleberrv-bushes were

ft

ven' abundant, and the next summer tliev bore

ft ft

a remarkable quantity of that kind of gall called
Huckleberiy-apple. forming quite handsome
thouo-h monstrous blossoms. But it must be
added, that this shrubberv swarmed with wood-

./ 7)

rur:

:rT'iith

ACROSS THE CAPE 151

ticks, sometimes very troublesome parasites, and
which it takes very horny fingers to crack.

The inhabitants of these towns have a great
regard for a tree, though their standard for one
is necessarily neither large nor high; and when
they tell you of the large trees that once grew
here, you must think of them, not as absolutely
large, but large compared with the present gen-
eration. Their "brave old oaks," of which
they speak with so much respect, and which
they will point out to you as relics of the primi-
tive forest, one hundred or one hundred and
fifty, ay, for aught they know, two hundred years
old, have a ridiculously dwarfish appearance,
which excites a smile in the beholder. The
largest and most venerable which they will show
you in such a case are, perhaps, not more than
twenty or twenty-five feet high. I was especially
amused by the Liliputian old oaks in the south
part of Truro. To the inexperienced eye, which
appreciated their proportions only, they might
appear vast as the tree which saved his royal
majesty, but measured, they were dwarfed at
once almost into lichens which a deer might eat
up in a morning. Yet they will tell you that
large schooners were once built of timber which
grew in Wellfleet. The old houses also are built
of the timber of the Cape; but instead of the
forests in the midst of which they originally
stood, barren heaths, with poverty-grass for

152 CAPE COD

heather, now stretch away on every side. The
modern houses are built of what is called "di-
mension timber," imported from Maine, all
ready to be set up, so that commonly they do
not touch it again with an axe. Almost all the
wood used for fuel is imported by vessels or cur-
rents, and of course all the coal. I was told that
probably a quarter of the fuel and a considerable
part of the lumber used in North Truro was
drift-wood. Many get all their fuel from the
beach.

Of birds not found in the interior of the State,
— at least in my neighborhood, — I heard, in
the summer, the Black-throated Bunting (Friii-
gilla Americana) amid the shrubbery, and in the
open land the Upland Plover (Totanus Bar-
tramius), whose quivering notes were ever and
anon prolonged into a clear, somewhat plaintive,
yet hawk-like scream, which sounded at a very
indefinite distance. The bird may have been
in the next field, though it sounded a mile off.

To-day we were walking through Truro, a
town of about eighteen hundred inhabitants.
We had already come to Pamet River, which
empties into the Bay. This was the limit of the
Pilgrims' journey up the Cape from Province-
town, when seeking a place for settlement. It
rises in a hollow within a few rods of the Atlantic,
and one who lives near its source told us that in
high tides the sea leaked through, yet the wind

ACROSS THE CAPE 153

and waves preserve intact the barrier between
them, and thus the whole river is steadily driven
westward butt-end foremost, — fountain-head,
channel, and light-house at the mouth, all
together.

Early in the afternoon we reached the High-
land Light, whose white tower we had seen rising
out of the bank in front of us for the last mile or
two. It is fourteen miles from the Nauset Lights,
on what is called the Clay Pounds, an immense
bed of clay abutting on the Atlantic, and, as the
keeper told us, stretching quite across the Cape,
which is here only about two miles wide. We
perceived at once a difference in the soil, for
there was an interruption of the desert, and a
slight appearance of a sod under our feet, such
as we had not seen for the last two days.

After arranging to lodge at the light-house, we
rambled across the Cape to the Bay, over a sin-
gularly bleak and barren-looking country, con-
sisting of rounded hills and hollows, called by
geologists diluvial elevations and depressions, —
a kind of scenery which has been compared to a
chopped sea, though this suggests too sudden a
transition. There is a delineation of this very
landscape in Hitchcock's Report on the Geology
of Massachusetts, a work which, by its size at
least, reminds one of a diluvial elevation itself.
Looking southward from the light-house, the
Cape appeared like an elevated plateau, sloping

154 CAPE COD

very regularly, though slightly, downward from
the edge of the bank on the Atlantic side, about
one hundred and fifty feet above the ocean, to
that on the Bay side. On traversing this we
found it to be interrupted by broad valleys or
gullies, which become the hollows in the bank
when the sea has worn up to them. They are
commonly at right angles with the shore, and
often extend quite across the Cape. Some of the
valleys, however, are circular, a hundred feet
deep without any outlet, as if the Cape had sunk
in those places, or its sands had run out. The
few scattered houses which we passed, being
placed at the bottom of the hollows for shelter
and fertility, were, for the most part, concealed
entirely, as much as if they had been swallowed
up in the earth. Even a village with its meeting-
house, which we had left little more than a stone's
throw behind, had sunk into the earth, spire and
all, and we saw only the surface of the upland
and the sea on either hand. When approaching
it, we had mistaken the belfry for a summer-
house on the plain. We began to think that we
might tumble into a village before we were
aware of it, as into an ant-lion's hole, and be
drawn into the sand irrecoverably. The most
conspicuous objects on the land were a distant
windmill, or a meeting-house standing alone, for
only they could afford to occupy an exposed
place. A great part of the township, however, is

ACROSS THE CAPE 155

a barren, heath-like plain, and perhaps one
third of it lies in common, though the property
of individuals. The author of the old "Descrip-
tion of Truro," speaking of the soil, says : "The
snow, which would be of essential service to it
provided it lay level and covered the ground, is
blown into drifts and into the sea." This pe-
culiar open country, with here and there a patch
of shrubbery, extends as much as seven miles, or
from Pamet River on the south to High Head on
the north, and from Ocean to Bay. To walk
over it makes on a stranger such an impression
as being at sea, and he finds it impossible to
estimate distances in any weather. A windmill
or a herd of cows may seem to be far away in the
horizon, yet, after going a few rods, he will be
close upon them. He is also deluded by other
kinds of mirage. When, in the summer, I saw a
family a-blueberrying a mile off, walking about
amid the dwarfish bushes which did not come up
higher than their ankles, they seemed to me to
be a race of giants, twenty feet high at least.

The highest and sandiest portion next the
Atlantic was thinly covered with Beach-grass
and Indigo- weed. Next to this the surface of
the upland generally consisted of white sand
and gravel, like coarse salt, through which a
scanty vegetation found its way up. It will give
an ornithologist some idea of its barrenness if I
mention that the next June, the month of grass.

156 CAPE COD

I found a night-hawk's eggs there, and that al-
most any square rod thereabouts, taken at ran-
dom, would be an eligible site for such a deposit.
The kildeer- plover, which loves a similar locality,
also drops its eggs there, and fills the air above
with its din. This upland also produced Cla-
donia lichens, poverty-grass, savory-leaved aster
{Diplopappiis linariifolius), mouse-ear, bear-
berry, &c. On a few hillsides the savory-leaved
aster and mouse-ear alone made quite a dense
sward, said to be very pretty when the aster is
in bloom. In some parts the two species of
poverty-grass {Hudsonia tomentosa and eri-
coides), which deserve a better name, reign for
miles in little hemispherical tufts or islets, like
moss, scattered over the waste. They linger in
bloom there tiH the middle of July. Occasionally
near the beach these rounded beds, as also those
of the sea-sandwort {Honkenya pcploides), were
filled with sand within an inch of their tops, and
were hard, like large ant-hills, while the sur-
rounding sand was soft. In summer, if the
poverty-grass grows at the head of a Hollow
looking toward the sea, in a bleak position where
the wind rushes up, the northern or exposed
half of the tuft is sometimes all black and dead
like an oven-broom, while the opposite half is
yellow with blossoms, the whole hillside thus
presenting a remarkable contrast when seen from
the poverty-stricken and the flourishing side.

ACROSS THE CAPE 157

This plant, which in many places would be es-
teemed an ornament, is here despised by many
on account of its being associated with barren-
ness. It might well be adopted for the Barn-
stable coat-of-arms, in a field sahleux. I should
be proud of it. Here and there were tracts of
Beach-grass mingled with the Sea-side Golden-
rod and Beach-pea, which reminded us still
more forcibly of the ocean.

We read that there was not a brook in Truro.
Yet there were deer here once, which must often
have panted in vain; but I am pretty sure that
I afterward saw a small fresh-water brook emp-
tying into the south side of Pamet River, though
I was so heedless as not to taste it. At any rate,
a little boy near by told me that he drank at it.
There was not a tree as far as we could see, and
that was many miles each way, the general level
of the upland being about the same everywhere.
Even from the Atlantic side we overlooked the
Bay, and saw to Manomet Point in Plymouth,
and better from that side because it was the
highest. The almost universal bareness and
smoothness of the landscape were as agreeable
as novel, making it so much the more like the
deck of a vessel. We saw vessels sailing south
into the Bay, on the one hand, and north along
the Atlantic shore, on the other, all with an aft
wind.

The single road which runs lengthwise the

158 CAPE COD

Cape, now winding over the plain, now through
the shrubbery which scrapes the wheels of the
stage, was a mere cart-track in the sand, com-
monly without any fences to confine it, and con-
tinually changing from this side to that, to harder
ground, or sometimes to avoid the tide. But
the inhabitants travel the waste here and there
pilgrim-wise and staff in hand, by narrow foot-
paths, through which the sand flows out and
reveals the nakedness of the land. We shud-
dered at the thought of living there and taking
our afternoon walks over those barren swells,
where we could overlook every step of our walk
before taking it, and would have to pray for a.
fog or a snow-storm to conceal our destiny.
The walker there must soon eat his heart.
In the north part of the town there is no house
from shore to shore for several miles, and it is as
wild and solitary as the Western Prairies —
used to be. Indeed, one who has seen every
house in Truro will be surprised to hear of the
number of the inhabitants, but perhaps five
hundred of the men and boys of this small town
were then abroad on their fishing grounds. Only
a few men stay at home to till. the sand or watch
for blackfish. The farmers are fishermen-
farmers and understand better ploughing the sea
than the land. They do not disturb their sands
much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed in the
creeks, to say nothing of blackfish occasionally

ACROSS THE CAPE 159

rottlnoj on the shore. Between the Pond and
East Harbor Village there was an interesting
plantation of pitch-pines, twenty or thirty acres
in extent, like those which we had already seen
from the stage. One who lived near said that
the land was purchased by two men for a shilling
or twenty-five cents an acre. Some is not con-
sidered worth writing a deed for. This soil or
sand, which was partially covered with poverty
and beach grass, sorrel, &c., was furrowed at
intervals of about four feet and the seed dropped
by a machine. The pines had come up ad-
mirably and grown the first year three or four
inches, and the second six inches and more.
Where the seed had been lately planted the white
sand was freshly exposed in an endless furrow
winding round and round the sides of the deep
hollows, in a vortical spiral manner, which pro-
duced a very singular effect, as if you were look-
ing into the reverse side of a vast banded shield.
This experiment, so important to the Cape,
appeared very successful, and perhaps the time
will come when the greater part of this kind of
land in Barnstable County will be thus covered
with an artificial pine forest, as has been done
in some parts of France. In that country 12,500
acres of downs had been thus covered in 1811
near Bayonne. They are called pig7iadas, and
according to Loudon "constitute the principal
riches of the inhabitants, where there was a

160 CAPE COD

drifting desert before." It seemed a nobler kind
of grain to raise than corn even.

A few years ago Truro was remarkable among
the Cape towns for the number of sheep raised
in it; but I was told that at this time only two
men kept sheep in the town, and in 1855, a
Truro boy ten years old told me that he had never
seen one. They were formerly pastured on the
unfenced lands or general fields, but now the
owners were more particular to assert their rights,
and it cost too much for fencing. The rails are
cedar from Maine, and two rails will answer for
ordinary purposes, but four are required for
sheep. This was the reason assigned by one who
had formerly kept them for not keeping them
any longer. Fencing stuff is so expensive that I
saw fences made with only one rail, and very
often the rail when split was carefully tied with
a string. In one of the villages I saw the next
summer a cow tethered by a rope six rods long,
the rope long in proportion as the feed was short
and thin. Sixty rods, ay, all the cables of the
Cape, would have been no more than fair.
Tethered in the desert for fear that she would
get into Arabia Felix ! I helped a man weigh a
bundle of hay which he was selling to his neigh-
bor, holding one end of a pole from which it
swung by a steel-yard hook, and this was just
half his whole crop. In short, the country looked
so barren that I several times refrained from

ACROSS THE CAPE 161

asking the inhabitants for a string or a piece of
wrapping-paper, for fear I should rob them, for
they plainly were obliged to import these things
as well as rails, and where there were no news-
boys, I did not see what they would do for waste
paper.

The objects around us, the make-shifts of
fishermen ashore, often made us look down to
see if we were standing on terra firma. In the
wells everywhere a block and tackle were used
to raise the bucket, instead of a windlass, and
by almost every house was laid up a spar or a
plank or two full of auger-holes, saved from a
wreck. The windmills were partly built of these,
and they were worked into the public bridges.
The light- house keeper, who was having his barn
shingled, told me casually that he had made
three thousand good shingles for that purpose
out of a mast. You would sometimes see an old
oar used for a rail. Frequently also some fair-
weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm
near the coast was nailed up against an out-
house. I saw fastened to a shed near the light-
house a long new sign with the words "Anglo
Saxon" on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a
useless part which the ship could afford to lose,
or which the sailors had discharged at the same
time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat
as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off

in passing through the Symplegades.

11

162 CAPE COD

To the fisherman, the Cape itself is a sort of
store-ship laden with supplies, — a safer and
larger craft which carries the women and chil-
dren, the old men and the sick ; and indeed sea-
phrases are as common on it as on board a
vessel. Thus is it ever with a sea-going people.
The old Northmen used to speak of the "keel-
ridge" of the country, that is, the ridge of the
Doffrafield Mountains, as if the land were a
boat turned bottom up. I was frequently re-
minded of the Northmen here. The inhabitants
of the Cape are often at once farmers and sea-
rovers; thev are more than vikings or kings of
the bays, for their sway extends over the open
sea also. A farmer in Wellfleet, at whose house
I afterward spent a night, who had raised fifty
bushels of potatoes the previous year, which is a
large crop for the Cape, and had extensive salt-
works, pointed to his schooner, which lay in
sight, in which he and his man and boy occa-
sionally ran down the coast a-trading as far as
the Capes of Virginia. This was his market-
cart, and his hired man knew how to steer her.
Thus he drove two teams a-field,

"ere the high seas appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the mom."

Though probably he would not hear much of the
"gray fly" on his way to Virginia.

A great proportion of the inhabitants of the

ACROSS THE CAPE 163

Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming
on some ocean highway or other, and the history
of one of their ordinary trips would cast the
Argonautic expedition into the shade. I have
just heard of a Cape Cod captain who was ex-
pected home in the beginning of the winter from
the West Indies, but was long since given up for
lost, till his relations at length have heard with
joy, that, after getting Avithin forty miles of Cape
Cod light, he was driven back by nine successive
gales to Key West, between Florida and Cuba,
and was once again shaping his course for home.
Thus he spent his winter. In ancient times the
adventures of these two or three men and boys
would have been made the basis of a myth, but
now such tales are crowded into a line of short-
hand signs, like an algebraic formula in the
shipping news. "Wherever over the world,"
said Palfrey in his oration at Barnstable, "you
see the stars and stripes floating, you may have
good hope that beneath them some one will be
found who can tell you the soundings of Barn-
stable, or Wellfleet, or Chatham Harbor."

I passed by the home of somebody's (or every-
body's) Uncle Bill, one day over on the Plymouth
shore. It was a schooner half keeled-up on the
mud: we aroused the master out of a sound
sleep at noonday, by thumping on the bottom of
his vessel till he presented himself at the hatch-
way, for we wanted to borrow his clam-digger.

164 CAPE COD

Meaning to make him a call, I looked out the
next morning, and lo ! he had run over to "the
Pines" the evening before, fearing an easterly
storm. He outrode the great gale in the spring
of 1851, dashing about alone in Plymouth Bay.
He goes after rockweed, lighters vessels, and
saves wrecks. I still saw him lying in the mud
over at "the Pines" in the horizon, which place
he could not leave if he would till flood tide.
But he would not then probably. This waiting
for the tide is a singular feature in life by the
sea-shore. A frequent answer is, "Well! you
can't start for two hours yet." It is something
new to a landsman, and at first he is not disposed
to wait. History says that "two inhabitants of
Truro were the first who adventured to the Falk-
land Isles in pursuit of whales. This voyage was
undertaken in the year 1774, by the advice of
Admiral Montague of the British navy, and was
crowned with success."

At the Pond Village we saw a pond three
eighths of a mile long densely filled with cat-tail
flags, seven feet high, — enough for all the
coopers in New England.

The western shore was nearly as sandy as the
eastern, but the water was much smoother, and
the bottom was partially covered with the slender
grass-like seaweed (Zostera), which we had not
seen on the Atlantic side ; there were also a few
rude sheds for trying fish on the beach there,

ACROSS THE CAPE 165

which made it appear less wild. In the few
marshes on this side we afterward saw Samphire,
Rosemary, and other plants new to us inlanders.
In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds
of blackfish (the Social Whale, Globicephalus
Melas of De Kay ; called also Black Whale-fish,
Howling Whale, Bottlehead, etc.), fifteen feet
or more in length, are driven ashore in a single
school here. I witnessed such a scene in July,
1855. A carpenter who was working at the light-
house arriving early in the morning remarked
that he did not know but he had lost fifty dollars
by coming to his work; for as he came along
the Bay side he heard them driving a school of
blackfish ashore, and he had debated with him-
self whether he should not go and join them and
take his share, but had concluded to come to his
work. After breakfast I came over to this place,
about two miles distant, and near the beach
met some of the fishermen returning from their
chase. Looking up and down the shore, I could
see about a mile south some large black masses
on the sand, which I knew must be blackfish,
and a man or two about them. As I walked
along towards them I soon came to a huge car-
cass whose head was gone and whose blubber
had been stripped off some weeks before; the
tide was just beginning to move it, and the
stench compelled me to go a long way round.
When I came to Great Hollow I found a fisher-

166 CAPE COD

man and some boys on the watch, and counted
about thirty blackfish, just killed, with many
lance wounds, and the water was more or less
bloody around. They were partly on shore and
partly in the water, held by a rope round their
tails till the tide should leave them. A boat had
been somewhat stove bv the tail of one. Thev
were a smooth shining black, like India-rubber,
and had remarkably simple and lumpish forms
for animated creatures, with a blunt round snout
or head, whale-like, and simple stiff-looking
flippers. The largest were about fifteen feet
long, but one or two were only five feet long, and
still without teeth. The fisherman slashed one
with his jackknife, to show me how thick the
blubber was, — about three inches ; and as I
passed my finger through the cut it w^as covered
thick with oil. The blubber looked like pork,
and this man said that when they were trjdng it
the bovs would sometimes come round with a

9/'

piece of bread in one hand, and take a piece of
blubber in the other to eat with it, preferring it
to pork scraps. He also cut into the flesh be-
neath, which was firm and red like beef, and he
said that for his part he preferred it when fresh
to beef. It is stated that in 1812 blackfish were
used as food by the poor of Bretagne. They
were waitino; for the tide to leave these fishes hio;h
and dry, that they might strip oft' the blubber and
carry it to their tiy- works in their boats, where

ACROSS THE CAPE 167

they try it on the beach. They get commonly
a barrel of oil, worth fifteen or twenty dollars, to
a fish. There were many lances and harpoons in
the boats, — much slenderer instruments than I
had expected. An old man came along the
beach with a horse and wagon distributing the
dinners of the fishermen, which their wives had
put up in little pails and jugs, and which he had
collected in the Pond Village, and for this service,
I suppose, he received a share of the oil. If one
could not tell his own pail, he took the first he
came to.

As I stood there they raised the cry of "an-
other school," and we could see their black
backs and their blowing about a mile northward,
as they went leaping over the sea like horses.
Some boats were already in pursuit there, driving
them toward the beach. Other fishermen and
boys running up began to jump into the boats
and push them off from where I stood, and I
might have gone too had I chosen. Soon there
were twenty-five or thirty boats in pursuit, some
large ones under sail, and others rowing with
might and main, keeping outside of the school,
those nearest to the fishes striking on the sides
of their boats and blowing horns to drive them
on to the beach. It was an exciting race. If
they succeed in driving them ashore each boat
takes one share, and then each man, but if they
are compelled to strike them off shore each

168 CAPE COD

boat's company take what tliey strike. I walked
rapidly along the shore toward the north, while
the fishermen were rowincj still more swiftly to
join their companions, and a little boy who
walked bv mv side was concrratulatino- himself
that his father's boat was beatino- another one.
An old blind fisherman whom we met, inquired,
"Where are thev .^ I can't see. Have thev ajot
them ?" In the mean while the fishes had turned
and were escaping northward toward Province-
town, only occasionally the back of one beinsj
seen. So the nearest crews were compelled to
strike them, and we saw several boats soon made
fast, each to its fish, which, four or five rods
ahead, was drawing it like a race-horse straight
toward the beach, leaping half out of water,
blowins: blood and water from its hole, and
leavincT a streak of foam behind. But they went
ashore too far north for us, though we could see
the fishermen leap out and lance them on the
sand. It was just like pictures of whaling which
I have seen, and a fisherman told me that it was
nearly as dano^erous. In his first trial he had
been much excited, and in his haste had used a
lance with its scabbard on, but nevertheless had
thrust it quite through his fish.

I learned that a few davs before this one hun-
dred and eiffhtv blackfish had been driven ashore
in one school at Eastham, a little farther south,
and that the keeper of Billingsgate Point light

ACROSS THE CAPE 169

went out one morning about the same time and
cut his initials on the backs of a large school
which had run ashore in the night, and sold his
right to them to Provincetown for one thousand
dollars, and probably Provincetown made as
much more. x\nother fisherman told me that
nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty
were driven ashore in one school at Great Hol-
low. In the Naturalists* Librarv, it is said that,
in the winter of 1809-10, one thousand one hun-
dred and ten "approached the shore of Hralfiord,
Iceland, and were captured." De Kay says it is
not known why they are stranded. But one
fisherman declared to me that they ran ashore
in pursuit of squid, and that they generally came
on the coast about the last of Julv.

About a week afterward, when I came to this
shore, it was strewn, as far as I could see with a
glass, with the carcasses of blackfish stripped of
their blubber and their heads cut off; the latter
lying higher up. Walking on the beach was out
of the question on account of the stench. Be-
tween Provincetown and Truro they lav in the
very path of the stage. Yet no steps were taken
to abate the nuisance, and men were catchinsr
lobsters as usual just off the shore. I was told
that thev did sometimes tow them out and sink
them ; yet I wondered where they got the stones
to sink them with. Of course thev mio:ht be
made into guano, and Cape Cod is not so fertile

170 CAPE COD

that her inhabitants can afford to do -u^ithout
this manure, — to sav nothinsj of the diseases
they may produce.

After mv return home, wishinoj to learn what
was known about the Blackfish, I had recourse
to the reports of the zoological surveys of the
State, and I found that Storer had rightfully
omitted it in his Report on the Fishes, since it is
not a fish ; so I turned to Emmons's Report of
the Mammalia, but was surprised to find that
the seals and whales were omitted bv him, be-
cause he had had no opportunity to obser\'e them.
Considering how this State has risen and thriven
bv its fisheries. — that the leo-islature which au-
thorized the Zooloo-ical Survev sat under the
emblem of a codfish, — that Nantucket and New
Bedford are within our limits, — that an earlv
riser mav find a thousand or fifteen hundred

a/

dollars' worth of blackfish on the shore in a
mornino;, — that the Pilgrims saw the Indians
cutting up a blackfish on the shore at Eastham,
and called a part of that shore "Grampus Bay,"
from the number of blackfish thev found there,
before thev got to Plvmouth, — and that from
that time to this these fishes have continued to
enrich one or two counties almost annually, and
that their decaying carcasses were now poisoning
the air of one countv for more than thirtv miles,
— I thought it remarkable that neither the popu-
lar nor scientific name was to befound in a report

ACROSS THE CAPE 171

on our mammalia, — a catalogue of the produc-
tions of our land and water.

We had here, as well as all across the Cape, a
fair view of Provincetown, five or six miles dis-
tant over the water toward the west, under its
shrubby sand-hills, with its harbor now full of
vessels whose masts mingled with the spires of
its churches, and gave it the appearance of a
quite large seaport town.

The inhabitants of all the lower Cape towns
enjoy thus the prospect of two seas. Standing
on the western or larboard shore, and looking;
across to where the distant mainland looms, they
can say. This is Massachusetts Bay ; and then,
after an hour's sauntering walk, they may stand
on the starboard side, beyond which no land
is seen to loom, and say, This is the Atlantic
Ocean.

On our wav back to the lio-ht-house, bv whose
white-washed tower we steered as securelv as the
mariner by its light at night, we passed through
a graveyard, which apparently was saved from
being blown away by its slates, for they had
enabled a thick bed of huckleberry-bushes to
root themselves amid the oraves. We thought
it would be worth the while to read the epitaphs
where so many were lost at sea ; however, as not
only their lives, but commonly their bodies also,
were lost or not identified, there were fewer
epitaphs of this sort than we expected, though

172 CAPE COD

there were not a few. Their graveyard is the
ocean. Near the eastern side we started up a
fox in a hollow, the only kind of wild quadruped,
if I except a skunk in a salt-marsh, that we saw
in all our walk (unless painted and box tortoises
may be called quadrupeds). He was a large,
plump, shaggy fellow, like a yellow dog, with, as
usual, a white tip to his tail, and looked as if he
fared well on the Cape. He cantered away
into the shrub-oaks and bayberry-bushes which
chanced to grow there, but were hardly high
•enough to conceal him. I saw another the next
summer leaping over the top of a beach-plum a
little farther north, a small arc of his course
(which I trust is not yet run), from which I en-
deavored in vain to calculate his whole orbit :
there were too many unknown attractions to be
allowed for. I also saw the exuviae of a third
fast sinking into the sand, and added the skull
to my collection. Hence I concluded that they
must be plenty thereabouts ; but a traveller may
meet with more than an inhabitant, since he is
more likely to take an unfrequented route across
the country. They told me that in some years
they died off in great numbers by a kind of mad-
ness, under the effect of which they were seen
whirling round and round as if in pursuit of
their tails. In Crantz's account of Greenland, he
says : "They (the foxes) live upon birds and their
eggs, and, when they can't get them, upon crow-

ACROSS THE CAPE 173

berries, mussels, crabs, and what the sea casts
out."

Just before reaching the light-house, we saw
the sun set in the Bay, — for standing on that
narrow Cape was, as I have said, like being on
the deck of a vessel, or rather at the masthead
of a man-of-war, thirty miles at sea, though we
knew that at the same moment the suii was set-
ting behind our native hills, which were just
below the horizon in that direction. This sight
drove everything else quite out of our heads, and
Homer and the Ocean came in again with a
rush, —

Ev 8 €Tr€(r f2K€av<3 Xafnrpov <f>do<i rjeXcoio,

the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean.

VIII
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT

THIS light-house, known to mariners as the
Cape Cod or Highland Light, is one of
our "primary sea-coast lights," and is
usually the first seen by those approaching the
entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe.
It is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and
forty-one from Boston Light. It stands about
twenty rods from the edge of the bank, which is
here formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and
square, level and dividers, of a carpenter who was
shingling a barn near by, and using one of those
shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude sort of
quadrant, with pins for sights and pivots, and got
the angle of elevation of the Bank opposite the
light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the
length of its slope, and so measured its height on
the shingle. It rises one hundred and ten feet
above its immediate base, or about one hundred
and twenty-three feet above mean low water.
Graham, who has carefully surveyed the ex-
tremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and
thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an
angle of forty degrees with the horizon, where I
measured it, but the clay is generally much

«3

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 175

steeper. No cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half
a mile farther south the bank is fifteen or twenty-
five feet higher, and that appeared to be the
highest land in North Truro. Even this vast
clay bank is fast wearing away. Small streams
of water trickling down it at intervals of two or
three rods, have left the intermediate clay in the
form of steep Gothic roofs fifty feet high or more,
the ridges as sharp and rugged-looking as rocks ;
and in one place the bank is curiously eaten out
in the form of a large semicircular crater.

According to the light-house keeper, the Cape
is wasting here on both sides, though most on the
eastern. In some places it had lost many rods
within the last year, and, erelong, the light-house
must be moved. We calculated, jrom his data,
how soon the Cape would be quite worn away at
this point, "for," said he, "I can remember sixty
years back.' "^ We were even more surprised at
this last announcement, — that is, at the slow
waste of life and energy in our informant, for
we had taken him to be not more than forty, —
than at the rapid wasting of the Cape, and we
thought that he stood a fair chance to outlive the
former.

Between this October and June of the next year
I found that the bank had lost about forty feet
in one place, opposite the light-house, and it was
cracked more than forty feet farther from the
edge at the last date, the shore being strewn with

176 CAPE COD

the recent rubbish. But I judged that generally
it was not wearing away here at the rate of more
than six feet annually. Any conclusions drawn
from the observations of a few years or one gen-
eration only are likely to prove false, and the
Cape may balk expectation by its durability.
In some places even a wrecker's foot-path down
the bank lasts several years. One old inhabi-
tant told us that when the light-house was built,
in 1798, it was calculated that it would stand
forty-five years, allowing the bank to waste one
length of fence each year, "but," said he, "there
it is" (or rather another near the same site, about
twenty rods from the edge of the bank) .

The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere,
for one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago
on the north of Provincetown whose ''bones'*
(this was his word) are still visible many rods
within the present line of the beach, half buried
in sand. Perchance they lie alongside the tim-
bers of a whale. The general statement of the
inhabitants is that the Cape is wasting on
both sides, but extending itself on particular
points on the south and west, as at Chatham and
Monomoy Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long,
and Race Points. James Freeman stated in his
day that above three miles had been added to
Monomoy Beach during the previous fifty years,
and it is said to be still extending as fast as ever.
A writer in the Massachusetts Magazine, in the

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 177

last century, tells us that "when the English first
settled upon the Cape, there was an island off
Chatham, at three leagues' distance, called
Webbs' Island, containing twenty acres, covered
with red-cedar or savin. The inhabitants of Nan-
tucket used to carry wood from it" ; but he adds
that in his day a large rock alone marked the
spot, and the water was six fathoms deep there.
The entrance to Nauset Harbor, which was once
in Eastham, has now travelled south into Orleans.
The islands in Wellfleet Harbor once formed a
continuous beach, though now small vessels pass
between them. And so of many other parts of
this coast.

Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part
of the Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to
pay Paul. On the eastern side the sea appears
to be everywhere encroaching on the land. Not
only the land is undermined, and its ruins car-
ried off by currents, but the sand is blown from
the beach directly up the steep bank where it is
one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers the
original surface there many feet deep. If you
sit on the edge you will have ocular demonstra-
tion of this by soon getting your eyes full. Thus
the bank preserves its height as fast as it is worn
away. This sand is steadily travelling westward
at a rapid rate, "more than a hundred yards,"
says one writer, within the memory of inhabitants
now living ; so that in some places peat-meadows

12

178 CAPE COD

are buried deep under the sand, and the peat is
cut through it ; and in one phice a large peat-
meadow has made its appearance on the shore
in the bank covered many feet deep, and peat
lias been cut there. This accounts for that threat
pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. The
old oysterman had told us that many years ago
he lost a *'crittur" by her being mired in a swamp
near the Atlantic side east of his house, and
twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself en-
tirely, but has since seen signs of it appearing
on the beach. He also said that he had seen
cedar stumps "as big as cart-wheels "( ! ) on the
bottom of the Bav, three miles otf Billino-so-ate
Point, when leaning over the side of his boat in
pleasant weather, and that that was dry land
not Ions: affo. Another told us that a log; canoe
known to have been buried manv vears before
on the Bav side at East Harbor in Truro, where
the Cape is extremely narrow, appeared at length
on the Atlantic side, the Cape having rolled
over it, and an old woman said, — "Now, vou
see, it is true what I told you, that the Cape is
moving."

The bars along the coast shift with everv storm,
and in many places there is occasionally none at
all. We ourselves observed the effect of a single
storm with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855.
It moved the sand on the beach opposite the
light-house to the depth of six feet, and three

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 179

rods in width as far as we could see north and
south, and carried it bodily off no one knows
exactly where, laying bare in one place a large
rock five feet high which was invisible before,
and narrowing the beach to that extent. There
is usually, as I have said, no bathing on the back-
side of the Cape, on account of the undertow,
but when we were there last, the sea had, three
months before, cast up a bar near this light-
house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over
which the tide did not flow, leaving a narrow
cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between it
and the shore, which afforded excellent bathing.
This cove had from time to time been closed up
as the bar travelled northward, in one instance
imprisoning four or five hundred whiting and
cod, which died there, and the water as often
turned fresh, and finally gave place to sand.
This bar, the inhabitants assured us, might be
wholly removed, and the water six feet deep
there in two or three days.

The light-house keeper said that when the wind
blowed strong on to the shore, the waves ate fast
into the bank, but when it blowed off they took
no sand away; for in the former case the wind
heaped up the surface of the water next to the
beach, and to preserve its equilibrium a strong
undertow immediately set back again into the
sea which carried with it the sand and whatever
else was in the way, and left the beach hard to

180 CAPE COD

walk on ; but in the latter case the undertow set
on and carried the sand with it, so that it was
particularly difficult for shipwrecked men to get
to land when the wind blowed on to the shore,
but easier when it blowed off. This undertow,
meeting the next surface wave on the bar which
itself has made, forms part of the dam over which
the latter breaks, as over an upright wall. The
sea thus plays with the land holding a sand-bar
in its mouth awhile before it swallows it, as a cat
plays with a mouse; but the fatal gripe is sure
to come at last. The sea sends its rapacious east
wind to rob the land, but before the former has
got far with its prey, the land sends its honest
west wind to recover some of its own. But, ac-
cording to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent,
and distribution of sand-bars and banks are
principally determined, not by winds and waves
but by tides.

Our host said that you would be surprised if
you were on the beach when the wind blew a
hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of the
drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried
directly northward and parallel with the shore as
fast as a man can walk, by the inshore current,
which sets strongly in that direction at flood
tide. The strone'est swimmers also are carried
along with it, and never gain an inch toward the
beach. Even a large rock has been moved half
a mile northward along- the beach. He assured

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 181

us that the sea was never still on the back-side
of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your
head, so that a great part of the time you could
not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest
weather the waves run six or eight feet up the
beach, though then you could get off on a plank.
Champlain and Pourtrincourt could not land
here in 1606, on account of the swell {la houlle),
yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In
the Sieur de la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes,"
my edition of which was published at Amsterdam
in 1711, at page 530 he says : —

*'Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i. e. a
god], makes the great lames a la Tner, and over-
turns canoes. Lames a la mer are the long vagues
which are not broken (entrecoupees) , and such as
one sees come to land all in one piece, from one
end of a beach to another, so that, however little
wind there may be, a shallop or a canoe could
hardly land {aborder terre) without turning over,
or being filled with water."

But on the Bay side the water even at its edge
is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Com-
monly there are no boats used along this beach.
There was a boat belonging to the Highland
Light which the next keeper after he had been
there a year had not launched, though he said that
there was good fishing just off the shore. Gen-
erally the Life Boats cannot be used when
needed. When the waves run very high it is

182 CAPE COD

impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully
you steer it, for it will often be completely cov-
ered by the curving edge of the approaching
breaker as by an arch, and so filled w4th water,
or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly
over backw^ards, and all the contents spilled
out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the
same way.

I heard of a party who went off fishing back of
Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in calm
weather, who, when they had laden their boats
with fish, and approached the land again, found
such a swell breaking on it, though there was no
wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At first
they thought to pull for Provincetown, but night
was coming on, and that was many miles distant.
Their case seemed a desperate one. As often
as they approached the shore and saw the terri-
ble breakers that intervened, they were deterred.
In short, they were thoroughly frightened.
Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those
in one boat chose a favorable opportunity, and
succeeded, by skill and good luck, in reaching
the land, but they were unwilling to take the re-
sponsibility of telling the others when to come
in, and as the other helmsman was inexperienced,
their boat was swamped at once, yet all managed
to save themselves.

Much smaller waves soon make a boat "nail-
sick," as the phrase is. The keeper said that

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 183

after a long and strong blow there would be three
large waves, each successively larger than the
last, and then no large ones for some time, and
that, when they wished to land in a boat, they
came in on the last and largest wave. Sir Thomas
Browne (as quoted in Brand's Popular Antiqui-
ties, p. 372), on the subject of the tenth wave
being "greater or more dangerous than any
other," after quoting Ovid, —

"Qui venit hie fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes
Posterior nono est, undecimo que prior," —

says, "Which, notwithstanding, is evidently
false; nor can it be made out either by obser-
vation either upon the shore or the ocean, as we
have with diligence explored in both. And
surely in vain we expect regularity in the waves
of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof,
as we may in its general reciprocations, whose
causes are constant, and effects therefore corre-
spondent; whereas its fluctuations are but mo-
tions subservient, which winds, storms, shores,
shelves, and every interjacency, irregulates."

We read that the Clay Pounds, were so called
"because vessels have had the misfortune to be
pounded against it in gales of wind," which we
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are
small ponds here, upheld by the clay, which were
formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or
Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. Water

184 CAPE COD

is found in the clay quite near the surface; but
we heard of one man who had sunk a well in the
sand close by, "till he could see stars at noon-
day," without finding any. Over this bare High-
land the wind has full sweep. Even in July it
blows the wings over the heads of the young
turkeys, which do not know enough to head
against it; and in gales the doors and windows
are blown in, and you must hold on to the light-
house to prevent being blown into the Atlantic.
They who merely keep out on the beach in a
storm in the winter are sometimes rewarded by
the Humane Society. If you would feel the full
force of a tempest, take up your residence on the.
top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland
Light, in Truro.

It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast
away on the east shore of Truro than anywhere
in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding that
this light-house has since been erected, after
almost every storm we read of one or more
vessels wrecked here, and sometimes more than
a dozen wrecks are visible from this point at one
time. The inhabitants hear the crash of vessels
going to pieces as they sit round their hearths,
and they commonly date from some memorable
shipwreck. If the history of this beach could be
written from beginning to end, it would be a
thrilling page in the history of commerce.

Truro was settled in the year .1700 as Danger-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 185

field. This was a very appropriate name, for I
afterward read on a monument in the graveyard,
near Pamet River, the following inscription : —

Sacred

to the memory of

57 citizens of Truro,

who were lost in seven

vessels, which

foundered at sea in

the memorable gale

of Oct. 3d, 1841.

Their names and ages by families were recorded
on different sides of the stone. They are said to
have been lost on George's Bank, and I was told
that only one vessel drifted ashore on the back-
side of the Cape, with the boys locked into the
cabin and drowned. It is said that the homes of
all were "within a circuit of two miles." Twenty-
eight inhabitants of Dennis were lost in the same
gale; and I read that "in one day, immediately
after this storm, nearly or quite one hundred
bodies were taken up and buried on Cape Cod."
The Truro Insurance Company failed for want
of skippers to take charge of its vessels. But the
surviving inhabitants went a-fishing again the
next year as usual. I found that it would not
do to speak of shipwrecks there, for almost
every family has lost some of its members at sea.
"Who lives in that house .^" I inquired. "Three
widows," was the reply. The stranger and the
inhabitant view the shore with very different

186 CAPE COD

eyes. The former may have come to see and
admire the ocean in a storm ; but the latter looks
on it as the scene where his nearest relatives were
wrecked. When I remarked to an old wrecker
partially blind, who w^as sitting on the edge of
the bank smoking a pipe, which he had just lit
with a match of dried beach-grass, that I sup-
posed he liked to hear the sound of the surf,
he answered: "No, I do not like to hear the
sound of the surf." He had lost at least one son
in "the memorable gale," and could tell many
a tale of the shipwrecks which he had witnessed
there.

In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bel-
lamy was led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the
captain of a snow which he had taken, to whom
he had offered his vessel again if he would pilot
him into Provincetown Harbor. Tradition says
that the latter threw over a burning tar-barrel in
the night, which drifted ashore, and the pirates
followed it. A storm coming on, their whole fleet
was wrecked, and more than a hundred dead
bodies lay along the shore. Six who escaped
shipwreck were executed. "At times to this day "
(1793), says the historian of Wellfleet, "there
are King William and Queen Mary's coppers
picked up, and pieces of silver called cob-money.
The violence of the seas moves the sands on the
outer bar, so that at times the iron caboose of the
ship [that is, Bellamy's] at low ebbs has beeu

An old wrecker at home

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 187

seen." Another tells us that, "For many years
after this shipwreck, a man of a very singular
and frightful aspect used every spring and au-
tumn to be seen travelling on the Cape, who was
supposed to have been one of Bellamy's crew.
The presumption is that he went to some place
where money had been secreted by the pirates,
to get such a supply as his exigencies required.
When he died, many pieces of gold were found in
a girdle which he constantly wore."

As I was walking on the beach here in my last
visit, looking for shells and pebbles, just after
that storm, which I have mentioned as movincr
the sand to a great depth, not knowing but I
might find some cob-money, I did actually pick
up a French crown piece, worth about a dollar
and six cents, near high- water mark, on the still
moist sand, just under the abrupt, caving base
of the bank. It was of a dark slate color, and
looked like a flat pebble, but still bore a very
distinct and handsome head of Louis XV., and
the usual legend on the reverse. Sit Nomen Do-
mini Benedictiim (Blessed be the Name of the
Lord), a pleasing sentiment to read in the sands
of the sea-shore, whatever it might be stamped
on, and I also made out the date, 1741. Of
course, I thought at first that it was that same
old button which I have found so many times,
but my knife soon showed the silver. Afterward,
rambling on the bars at low tide, I cheated my

188 CAPE COD

companion by holding up round shells (Scii-
tellce) between my fingers, whereupon he quickly
stripped and came off to me.

In the Revolution, a British ship of war called
the Somerset was wrecked near the Clay Pounds,
and all on board, some hundreds in number, were
taken prisoners. My informant said that he had
never seen any mention of this in the histories,
but that at any rate he knew of a silver watch,
which one of those prisoners by accident left
there, which was still going to tell the story.
But this event is noticed by some writers.

The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham
dragging for anchors and chains just oft' this
shore. She had her boats out at the work while
she shuffled about on various tacks, and, when
anything was found, drew up to hoist it on board.
It is a singular employment, at which men are
regularly hired and paid for their industr}', to
hunt to-day in pleasant weather for anchors
which have been lost, — the sunken faith and
hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain ;
now, perchance, it is the rusty one of some old
pirate's ship or Norman fisherman, vrhose cable
parted here two hundred years ago ; and now the
best bower anchor of a Canton or a California
ship, which has gone about her business. If the
roadsteads of the spiritual ocean could be thus
dragged, what rusty flukes of hope deceived and
parted chain-cables of faith might again be wind-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 189

lassed aboard ! enough to sink the finder's craft,
or stock new navies to the end of time. The
bottom of the sea is strewn with anchors, some
deeper and some shallower, and alternately cov-
ered and uncovered by the sand, perchance with
a small length of iron cable still attached, — to
which where is the other end ? So many uncon-
cluded tales to be continued another time. So,
if we had diving-bells adapted to the spiritual
deeps, we should see anchors with their cables
attached, as thick as eels in vinegar, all wriggling
vainly toward their holding-ground. But that is
not treasure for us which another man has lost;
rather it is for us to seek what no other man
has found or can find, — not be Chatham men,
dragging for anchors.

The annals of this voracious beach ! who could
write them, unless it were a shipwrecked sailor ?
How many who have seen it have seen it only in
the midst of danger and distress, the last strip of
earth which their mortal eyes beheld. Think of
the amount of suffering which a single strand has
witnessed. The ancients would have represented
it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more terrible
than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of
Truro told me that about a fortnight after the
St. John was wrecked at Cohasset he found two
bodies on the shore at the Clay Pounds. They
were those of a man, and a corpulent woman.
The man had thick boots on, though his head

190 CAPE COD

was off, but "it was alongside." It took the
finder some weeks to get over the sight. Per-
haps they were man and wife, and whom God
had joined the ocean currents had not put
asunder. Yet by what shght accidents at first
may they have been associated in their drifting.
Some of the bodies of those passengers were
picked up far out at sea, boxed up and sunk;
some brouo-ht ashore and buried. There are
more consequences to a shipwreck than the un-
derwriters notice. The Gulf Stream may return
some to their native shores, or drop them in
some out-of-the-way cave of Ocean, where time
and the elements will write new riddles with
their bones. — But to return to land again.

In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the
summer, two hundred holes of the Bank Swal-
low within a space six rods long, and there were
at least one thousand old birds within three
times that distance, twittering over the surf. I
had never associated them in my thoughts with
the beach before. One little boy who had been
a-birds-nesting had got eighty swallows' eggs
for his share ! Tell it not to the Humane Society.
There were many young birds on the clay be-
neath, which had tumbled out and died. Also
there were many Crow-blackbirds hopping about
in the dry fields, and the Upland Plover were
breeding close by the light-house. The keeper
had once cut off one's wing while mowing, as

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 191

she sat on her eggs there. This is also a favorite
resort for gunners in the fall to shoot the Golden
Plover. As around the shores of a pond are seen
devil's-needles, butterflies, etc., so here, to my
surprise, I saw at the same season great devil's-
needles of a size proportionably larger, or nearly
as big as my finger, incessantly coasting up and
down the edge of the bank, and butterflies also
were hovering over it, and I never saw so many
dorr-bugs and beetles of various kinds as strewed
the beach. They had apparently flown over the
bank in the night, and could not get up again,
and some had perhaps fallen into the sea and
were washed ashore. They may have been in
part attracted by the light-house lamps.

The Clav Pounds are a more fertile tract than
usual. We saw some fine patches of roots and
corn here. As generally on the Cape, the plants
had little stalk or leaf, but ran remarkably to
seed. The corn was hardly more than half as
high as in the interior, yet the ears were large and
full, and one farmer told us that he could raise
forty bushels on an acre without manure, and
sixty with it. The heads of the rye also were
remarkably large. The Shadbush (Amelanchier) ^
Beach Plums, and Blueberries {Vaccinium Penn-
sylvanicum) , like the apple-trees and oaks, were
very dwarfish, spreading over the sand, but at
the same time very fruitful. The blueberry was
but an inch or two high, and its fruit often rested

192 CAPE COD

on the ground, so that you did not suspect the
presence of the bushes, even on those bare hills,
until you were treading on them. I thought
that this fertility must be owing mainly to the
abundance of moisture in the atmosphere, for I
observed that what little grass there was was re-
markably laden with dew in the morning, and in
summer dense imprisoning fogs frequently last
till midday, turning one's beard into a wet nap-
kin about his throat, and the oldest inhabitant
may lose his way within a stone's throw of his
house or be obliged to follow the beach for a
guide. The brick house attached to the light-
house was exceedingly damp at that season, and,
writing-paper lost all its stiffness in it. It was
impossible to dry your towel after bathing, or to
press flowers without their mildewing. The air
was so moist that we rarely wished to drink,
though we could at all times taste the salt on our
lips. Salt was rarely used at table, and our host
told us that his cattle invariably refused it when
it was offered them, they got so much with their
grass and at every breath, but he said that a sick
horse or one just from the country would some-
times take a hearty draught of salt water, and
seemed to like it and be the better for it.

It was surprising to see how much water was
contained in the terminal bud of the sea-side
golden-rod, standing in the sand early in July,
and also how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flour-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 193

ished even in pure saiid. A man travelling by
the shore near there not long before us noticed
something green growing in the pure sand of the
beach, just at high-water mark, and on approach-
ing found it to be a bed of beets flourishing vig-
orously, probably from seed washed out of the
Franklin. Also beets and turnips came up in
the sea-weed used for manure in many parts of
the Cape. This suggests how various plants may
have been dispersed over the world to distant
islands and continents. Vessels, with seeds in
their cargoes, destined for particular ports, where
perhaps they were not needed, have been cast
away on desolate islands, and though their crews
perished, some of their seeds have been preserved.
Out of many kinds a few would find a soil and
climate adapted to them, become naturalized,
and perhaps drive out the native plants at last,
and so fit the land for the habitation of man. It
is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and
for the time lamentable shipwrecks may thus
contribute a new vegetable to a continent's stock,
and prove on the whole a lasting blessing to its
inhabitants. Or winds and currents might effect
the same without the intervention of man. What
indeed are the various succulent plants which
grow on the beach but such beds of beets and
turnips, sprung originally from seeds which per-
haps were cast on the waters for this end, though

we do not know the Franklin which they came

13

194 CAPE COD

out of ? In ancient times some Mr. Bell ( ?) was
sailing this way in his ark with seeds of rocket,
salt-wort, sandwort, beachgrass, samphire, bay-
berry, poverty -grass, etc., all nicely labelled with
directions, intending to establish a nursery some-
where; and did not a nursery get established,
though he thought that he had failed .?

About the light-house I observed in the sum-
mer the pretty Polygala polygama, spreading
ray- wise flat on the ground, white pasture this-
tles {Cirsium pumilum), and amid the shrubbery
the Smilax glauca, which is commonly said not
to grow so far north ; near the edge of the banks
about half a mile southward, the broom crow-
berry {Empetrum Conradii), for which Plymouth
is the only locality in Massachusetts usually
named, forms pretty green mounds four or five
feet in diameter by one foot high, — soft, springy
beds for the wayfarer. I saw it afterward in
Provincetown, but prettiest of all the scarlet pim-
pernel, or poor-man's weather-glass {Anagallis-
arvensis), greets you in fair weather on almost
every square yard of sand. From Yarmouth, I
have received the Chrysopsis jalcata (golden
aster), and Vaccinium stamineum (Deerberry or
Squaw Huckleberry) , with fruit not edible, some-
times as large as a cranberry (Sept. 7).

The Highland Light-house,^ where we were

* The light-house has since been rebuilt, and shows a Fresnel
light.

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 195

staying, is a substantial-looking building of
brick, painted white, and surmounted by an iron
cap. Attached to it is the dwelling of the keeper,
one story high, also of brick, and built by gov-
ernment. As we were going to spend the night
in a light-house, we wished to make the most of
so novel an experience, and therefore told our
host that we would like to accompany him when
he went to light up. At rather early candle-light
he lighted a small Japan lamp, allowing it to
smoke rather more than we like on ordinary
occasions, and told us to follow him. He led the
way first through his bedroom, which was placed
nearest to the light-house, and then through a
long, narrow, covered passage-way, between
whitewashed walls like a prison entry, into the
lower part of the light-house, where many great
butts of oil were arranged around ; thence we
ascended by a winding and open iron stairway,
with a steadily increasing scent of oil and lamp-
smoke, to a trap-door in an iron floor, and
tlirouo;li this into the lantern. It was a neat
building, with everything in apple-pie order, and
no danger of anvthing; rustino; there for want of
oil. The light consisted of fifteen argand lamps,
placed within smooth concave reflectors twenty-
one inches in diameter, and arranged in two
horizontal circles one above the other, facing
every way excepting directly down the Cape.
These were surrounded, at a distance of two or

196 CAPE COD

three feet, by large plate-glass windows, which
defied the storms, with iron sashes, on which
rested the iron cap. All the iron work, except
the floor, was painted white. And thus the light-
house was completed. We walked slowly round
in that narrow space as the keeper lighted each
lamp in succession, conversing with him at the
same moment that many a sailor on the deep
witnessed the liijhtino; of the Hio:hland Lio;ht.
His duty was to fill and trim and light his lamps,
and keep bright the reflectors. He filled them
every morning, and trimmed them commonly
once in the course of the night. He complained
of the quality of the oil which was furnished.
This house consumes about eiHit hundred o^allons
in a year, which cost not far from one dollar a
gallon; but perhaps a few lives would be saved
if better oil were provided. Another light-house
keeper said that the same proportion of winter-
strained oil was sent to the southernmost light-
house in the Union as to the most northern.
Formerlv, when this lio;ht-house had windows
with small and thin panes, a severe storm would
sometimes break the Mass, and then thev were
obliged to put up a wooden shutter in haste to
save their lio-hts and reflectors, — and some-
times in tempests, when the mariner stood most
in need of their ouidance, thev had thus nearlv
converted the light-house into a dark lantern,
which emitted only a few feeble rays, and those

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 197

commonly on the land or lee side. He spoke of
the anxiety and sense of responsibility which he
felt in cold and stormy nights in the winter ; when
he knew^ that many a poor fellow was depending
on him, and his lamps burned dimly, the oil
being chilled. Sometimes he was obliged to
warm the oil in a kettle in his house at midnight,
and fill his lamps over again, — for he could not
have a fire in the light-house, it produced such a
sweat on the windows. His successor told
me that he could not keep too hot a fire in
such a case. All this because the oil was poor.
The government lighting the mariners on its
wintry coast with summer-strained oil, to save
expense ! That were surely a summer-strained
mercy.

This keeper's successor, who kindly enter-
tained me the next year stated that one extremely
cold night, when this and all the neighboring
lights were burning summer oil, but he had been
provident enough to reserve a little winter oil
against emergencies, he was waked up with anx-
iety, and found that his oil w^as congealed, and
his lights almost extinguished; and when, after
manv hours' exertion, he had succeeded in re-
plenishing his reservoirs w^th winter oil at the
wick end, and with diflSculty had made them
burn, he looked out and found that the other
lights in the neighborhood, which were usually
visible to him, had gone out, and he heard after-

198 CAPE COD

ward that the Pamet River and Billingsgate
Lights also had been extinguished.

Our host said that the frost, too, on the win-
dows caused him much trouble, and in sultry
summer nights the moths covered them and
dimmed his lights; sometimes even small birds
flew against the thick plate glass, and were found
on the ground beneath in the morning with their
necks broken. In the spring of 1855 he found
nineteen small yellow-birds, perhaps goldfinches
or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead around the light-
house; and sometimes in the fall he had seen
where a golden plover had struck the glass in the
night, and left the down and the fatty part of its
breast on it.

Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep
his light shining before men. Surely the light-
house keeper has a responsible, if an easy, oflRce.
When his lamp goes out, he goes out ; or, at most,
only one such accident is pardoned.

I thought it a pity that some poor student did
not live there, to profit by all that light, since he
would not rob the mariner. "Well," he said, "I
do sometimes come up here and read the news-
paper when they are noisy down below." Think
of fifteen argand lamps to read the newspa-
per by ! Government oil ! — light, enough, per-
chance, to read the Constitution by ! I thought
that he should read nothing less than his Bible
by that light. I had a classmate who fitted for

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 199

college by the lamps of a light-house, which was
more light, we think, than the University
afforded.

When we had come down and walked a dozen
rods from the light-house, we found that we could
not get the full strength of its light on the narrow
strip of land between it and the shore, being too
low for the focus, and we saw only so many
feeble and rayless stars; but at forty rods in-
land we could see to read, though we were still
indebted to only one lamp. Each reflector sent
forth a separate "fan" of light, — one shone on
the windmill, and one in the hollow, while the
intervening spaces were in shadow. This light
is said to be visible twentv nautical miles and
more from an observer fifteen feet above the
level of the sea. We could see the revolving light
at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about nine
miles distant, and also the light on Long Point,
at the entrance of Provincetown Harbor, and
one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights,
across the Bay, nearly in a range with the last,
like a star in the horizon. The keeper thought
that the other Plymouth Light was concealed by
being exactly in a range with the Long Point
Light. He told us that the mariner was some-
times led astray by a mackerel fisher's lantern,
who was afraid of being run down in the night,
or even by a cottager's light, mistaking them for
some well-known light on the coast, and, when

200 CAPE COD

he discovered his mistake, was wont to curse the
prudent fisher or the wakeful cottager without
reason.

Though it was once declared that Providence
placed this mass of clay here on purpose to erect
a light-house on, the keeper said that the light-
house should have been erected half a mile far-
ther south, where the coast begins to bend, and
where the light could be seen at the same time
with the Nauset Lights, and distinguished from
them. They now talk of building one there. It
happens that the present one is the more useless
now, so near the extremity of the Cape, because
other light-houses have since been erected there.

Among the many regulations of the Light-
house Board, hanging against the wall here,
many of them excellent, perhaps, if there were a
regiment stationed here to attend to them, there
is one requiring the keeper to keep an account
of the number of vessels which pass his light
during the day. But there are a hundred vessels
in sight at once, steering in all directions, many
on the very verge of the horizon, and he must
have more eyes than Argus, and be a good deal
farther-sighted, to tell which are passing his
light. It is an employment in some respects best
suited to the habits of the gulls which coast up
and down here, and circle over the sea.

I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th
of June following, a particularly clear and beau-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 201

tiful morning, he rose about half an hour before
sunrise, and having a Httle time to spare, for his
custom was to extinguish his lights at sunrise,
walked down toward the shore to see what he
might find. When he got to the edge of the
bank he looked up, and, to his astonishment,
saw the sun rising, and already part way above
the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong,
he made haste back, and though it was still too
early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and
when he had got through and come down, he
looked out the window, and, to his still greater
astonishment, saw the sun just where it was
before, two-thirds above the horizon. He showed
me where its rays fell on the wall across the
room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when
he had done, there was the sun still at the same
height. Whereupon, not trusting to his own eyes
any longer, he called up his wife to look at it,
and she saw it also. There were vessels in sight
on the ocean, and their crews, too, he said, must
have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained
at that height for about fifteen minutes by the
clock, and then rose as usual, and nothing else ex-
traordinary happened during that day. Though
accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed
nor heard of such a phenomenon before. I sug-
gested that there might have been a cloud in the
horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun,
and his clock was only as accurate as the average ;

202 CAPE COD

or perhaps, as he denied the possibility of this,
it was such a looming of the sun as is said to
occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John
Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, that
when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, the
horizontal refraction varied so much one morn-
ing that "the upper limb of the sun twice ap-
peared at the horizon before it finally rose."

He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom
the sun looms, when there are so many millions
to whom it glooms rather, or who never see it
till an hour after it has risen. But it behooves
us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and
burning to the last, and not trust to the sun's
looming.

This keeper remarked that the centre of the
flame should be exactly opposite the centre of the
reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was not
careful to turn down his wicks in the morning,
the sun falling on the reflectors on the south side
of the building would set fire to them, like a
burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would
look up at noon and see them all lighted ! When
your light is ready to give light, it is readiest to
receive it, and the sun will light it. His successor
said that he had never known them to blaze in
such a case, but merely to smoke.

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a
sea turn or shallow fog while I was there the
next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 203

of the bank twenty rods distant, appeared like a
mountain pasture in the horizon. I was com-
pletely deceived by it, and I could then under-
stand why mariners sometimes ran ashore in
such cases, especially in the night, supposing it
to be far away, though they could see the land.
Once since this, being in a large oyster boat two
or three hundred miles from here, in a dark
night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land
and water, we came so near to running on to the
land before our skipper was aware of it, that the
first warning was my hearing the sound of the
surf under my elbow. I could almost have
jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go about
very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant
light for which we were steering, supposing it a
light-house five or six miles off, came through
the cracks of a fisherman's bunk not more than
six rods distant.

The keeper entertained us handsomely in his
solitary little ocean house. He was a man of
singular patience and intelligence, who, when
our queries struck him, rung as clear as a bell in
response. The light-house lamps a few feet dis-
tant shone full into my chamber, and made it as
bright as day, so I knew exactly how the High-
land Light bore all that night, and I was in no
danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this
was as still as a summer night. I thought, as I
lay there, half awake and half asleep, looking

204 CAPE COD

upward through the window at the Hghts above
my head, how many sleepless eyes from far
out on the Ocean stream — mariners of all na-
tions spinning their yarns through the various
watches of the night — were directed toward my
couch.

tt

IX

THE SEA AND THE DESERT

THE light-house lamps were still burning,
though now with a silvery lustre, when I
rose to see the sun come out of the Ocean ;
for he still rose eastward of us; but I was con-
vinced that he must have come out of a dry bed
beyond that stream, though he seemed to come
out of the water.

"The 8un once more touched the fields,
Mounting to heaven from the fair flowing
Deep- running Ocean."

Now we saw countless sails of mackerel fishers
abroad on the deep, one fleet in the north just
pouring round the Cape, another standing down
toward Chatham, and our host's son went off to
join some lagging member of the first which had
not yet left the Bay.

Before we left the light-house we were obliged
to anoint our shoes faithfully with tallow, for
walking on the beach, in the salt water and the
sand, had turned them red and crisp. To coun-
terbalance this, I have remarked that the sea-
shore, even where muddy, as it is not here, is
singularly clean; for notwithstanding the spat-
tering of the water and mud and squirting of

206 CAPE COD

the clams while walking to and from the boat,
your best black pants retain no stain nor dirt,
such as they would acquire from walking in the
country.

We have heard that a few days after this, when
the Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy
emissaries from Provincetown made particular
inquiries concerning us at this light-house. In-
deed, they traced us all the way down the Cape,
and concluded that we came by this unusual
route down the back-side and on foot, in order
•that we might discover a way to get off with our
booty when we had committed the robbery.
The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare
withal, that it is wellnigh impossible for a stranger
to visit it without the knowledge of its inhabi-
tants generally, unless he is wrecked on to it in
the night. So, when this robbery occurred, all
their suspicions seem to have at once centred on
us two travellers who had just passed down it.
If we had not chanced to leave the Cape so soon,
we should probably have been arrested. The
real robbers were two young men from Worcester
County who travelled with a centre-bit, and are
said to have done their work very neatly. But
the only bank that we pried into was the great
Cape Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of
an old French crown piece, some shells and
pebbles, and the materials of this story.

Again we took to the beach for another day

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 207

(October 13), walking along the shore of the re-
sounding sea, determined to get it into us. We
wished to associate with the Ocean until it lost
the pond-like look which it wears to a country-
man. We still thought that we could see the
other side. Its surface was still more sparkling
than the day before, and we beheld "the count-
less smilings of the ocean waves"; though some
of them were pretty broad grins, for still the
wind blew and the billows broke in foam along
the beach. The nearest beach to us on the other
side, whither we looked, due east, was on the
coast of Galicia, in Spain, whose capital is San-
tiago, though by old poets' reckoning it should
have been Atlantis or the Hesperides; but
heaven is found to be farther west now. At first
we were abreast of that part of Portugal entre
Douro e Mino, and then Galicia and the port of
Pontevedra opened to us as we walked along;
but we did not enter, the breakers ran so high.
The bold headland of Cape Finisterre, a little
north of east, jutted toward us next, with its
vain brag, for we flung back, — "Here is Cape
Cod, — Cape Land's-Beginning." A little in-
dentation toward the north, — for the land
loomed to our imaginations by a common mi-
rage, — we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we
sang : —

"There we lay, till next day.
In the Bay of Biscay O ! "

208 CAPE COD

A little south of east was Palos, where Colum-
bus weighed anchor, and farther yet the pillars
which Hercules set up; concerning which when
we inquired at the top of our voices what was
written on them, — for we had the morning sun
in our faces, and could not see distinctly, — the
inhabitants shouted Ne plus ultra (no more
beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only,
plus ultra (more beyond), and over the Bay
westward was echoed ultra (beyond). We spoke
to them through the surf about the Far West, the
true Hesperia, eco Trepa? or end of the day, the
This Side Sundown, where the sun was extin-
guished in the Pacific, and we advised them tp
pull up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs
on the shore of California, whither all our folks
were gone, — the only fie plus ultra now.
Whereat they looked crestfallen on their cliffs,
for we had taken the wind out of all their sails.

We could not perceive that any of their leav-
ings washed up here, though we picked up a
child's toy, a small dismantled boat, which may
have been lost at Pontevedra.

The Cape became narrower and narrower as
we approached its wrist between Truro and
Provincetown, and the shore inclined more de-
cidedly to the west. At the head of East Harbor
Creek, the Atlantic is separated but by half a
dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of the
Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 209

off for the last ten miles to the extremity at Race
Point, though the highest parts, which are called
"islands" from their appearance at a distance
on the sea, were still seventy or eighty feet above
the Atlantic, and afforded a good view of the
latter, as well as a constant view of the Bay,
there being no trees nor a hill suflficient to inter-
rupt it. Also the sands began to invade the land
more and more, until finally they had entire
possession from sea to sea, at the narrowest part.
For three or four miles between Truro and
Provincetown there were no inhabitants from
shore to shore, and there were but three or four
houses for twice that distance.

As we plodded along, either by the edge of the
ocean, where the sand was rapidly drinking up
the last wave that wet it, or over the sand-hills
of the bank, the mackerel fleet continued to pour
round the Cape north of us, ten or fifteen miles
distant, in countless numbers, schooner after
schooner, till they made a city on the water.
They were so thick that many appeared to be
afoul of one another; now all standing on this
tack, now on that. We saw how well the
New-Englanders had followed up Captain John
Smith's suggestions w^ith regard to the fisheries,
made in 1616, — to what a pitch they had carried
"this contemptible trade of fish," as he signifi-
cantly styles it, and were now equal to the Hol-
landers whose example he holds up for the

14

210 CAPE COD

English to emulate; notwithstanding that "in
this faculty," as he says, "the former are so
naturalized, and of their vents so certainly ac-
quainted, as there is no likelihood they will ever
be paralleled, having two or three thousand
busses, flat-bottoms, sword-pinks, todes, and
such like, that breeds them sailors, mariners,
soldiers, and merchants, never to be wrought
out of that trade and fit for any otlier." We
thought that it would take all these names and
more to describe the numerous craft which we
saw. Even then, some years before our "re-
nowned sires" with their "peerless dames"
stepped on Plymouth Rock, he wrote, "New-
foundland doth yearly freight neir eight hundred
sail of ships with a silly, lean, skinny, poor-john,
and cor fish," though all their supplies must be
annually transported from Europe. Why not
plant a colony here then, and raise those sup-
plies on the spot.'^ "Of all the four parts of the
world," says he, "that I have yet seen, not in-
habited, could I have but means to transport a
colony, I would rather live here than anywhere.
And if it did not maintain itself, were we but
once indifferently well fitted, let us starve."
Then "fishing before your doors," you "may
every night sleep quietly ashore, with good cheer
and what fires you will, or, when you please,
with your wives and family." Already he an-
ticipates "the new towns in New England in

Towing along shore

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 211

memory of their old," — and who knows what
may be discovered in the "heart and entrails"
of the land, "seeing even the very edges," etc.,
etc.

All this has been accomplished, and more,
and where is Holland now ? Verily the Dutch
have taken it. There was no long interval be-
tween the suggestion of Smith and the eulogy of
Burke.

Still one after another the mackerel schooners
hove in sight round the head of the Cape,
"whitening all the sea road," and we watched
each one for a moment with an undivided in-
terest. It seemed a pretty sport. Here in the
country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that
go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it ap-
peared as if every able-bodied man and helpful
boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure ex-
cursion in their yachts, and all would at last land
and have a chowder on the Cape. The gazetteer
tells you gravely how many of the men and boys
of these towns are engaged in the whale, cod,
and mackerel fishery, how many go to the banks
of Newfoundland, or the coast of Labrador, the
Straits of Belle Isle or the Bay of Chaleurs
(Shalore the sailors call it) ; as if I were to
reckon up the number of boys in Concord who
are engaged during the summer in the perch,
pickerel, bream, hornpout, and shiner fishery,
of which no one keeps the statistics, — though

212 CAPE COD

I think that it is pursued with as much profit to
the moral and intellectual man (or boy), and
certainly with less danger to the physical one.

One of my playmates, who was apprenticed
to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked
his master one afternoon if he might go a-fishing,
and his master consented. He was gone three
months. When he came back, he said that he
had been to the Grand Banks, and went to setting
type again as if only an afternoon had intervened.

I confess I was surprised to find that so many
men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives
almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a seri-
ous business men make of getting their dinners,
and how universally shiftlessness and a grovelling
taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry.
Better go without your dinner, I thought, than
be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormo-
rant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pur-
suits in the country appear not a whit less
frivolous.

I once sailed three miles on a mackerel cruise
myself. It was a Sunday evening after a very
warm day in which there had been frequent
thunder-showers, and I had walked along the
shore from Cohasset to Duxbury. I wished to
get over from the last place to Clark's Island,
but no boat could stir, they said, at that stage of
the tide, they being left high on the mud. At
length I learned that the tavern-keeper, Winsor,

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 213

was going out mackerelling with seven men that
evening, and would take me. When there had
been due delay, we one after another straggled
down to the shore in a leisurely manner, as if
waiting for the tide still, and in India-rubber
boots, or carrying our shoes in our hands, waded
to the boats, each of the crew bearing an armful
of wood, and one a bucket of new potatoes be-
sides. Then they resolved that each should
bring one more armful of wood, and that would
be enough. They had already got a barrel of
water, and had some more in the schooner.
We shoved the boats a dozen rods over the mud
and water till they floated, then rowing half a
mile to the vessel climbed aboard, and there we
were in a mackerel schooner, a fine stout vessel
of forty-three tons, whose name I forget. The
baits were not dry on the hooks. There was the
mill in which they ground the mackerel, and the
trough to hold it, and the long-handled dipper
to cast it overboard with; and already in the
harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools
of small mackerel, the real Scomber vernalis.
The crew proceeded leisurely to weigh anchor
and raise their two sails, there being a fair but
very slight wind ; — and the sun now setting
clear and shining on the vessel after the thunder-
showers, I thought that I could not have com-
menced the voyage under more favorable aus-
pices. They had four dories and commonly

214 CAPE COD

fished in them, else they fished on the starboard
side aft where their fines hung ready, two to a
man. The boom swung round once or twice,
and Winsor cast overboard the foul juice of
mackerel mixed with rain-water which remained
in his trough, and then we gathered about the
helmsman and told stories. I remember that
the compass was afi'ected by iron in its neighbor-
hood and varied a few degrees. There was one
amonir us iust returned from California, who
was now iroino: as passens^er for his health and
amusement. They expected to be gone about a
week, to beirin fishino; the next mornincr, and to
carrv' their fish fresh to Boston. Thev landed
me at Clark's Island, where the Pilgrims landed,
for my companions wished to get some milk for
the vovase. But I had seen the whole of it. The
rest was onlv croincr to sea and catchinoj the mack-
erel. Moreover, it was as well that I did not
remain with them, considering the small quan-
tity of supplies they had taken.

Now I saw the mackerel fleet on its fisJiing-
ground, though I was not at first aware of it.
So my experience was complete.

It was even more cold and windy to-day than
before, and we were frequently glad to take
shelter behind a sand-hill. None of the elements
were restinsr. On the beach there is a ceaseless
activitv, alwavs somethino- iioino; on, in storm and
in calm, winter and summer, night and day.

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 215

Even the sedentary man here enjoys a breadth
of view which is almost equivalent to motion.
In clear weather the laziest may look across the
Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the
Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely
raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look
after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless
dash and roar of the breakers. The restless
ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a
wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in
the world, the most rapid stenographers, could
not report the news it brings. No creature could
move slowlv where there was so much life around.
The few wreckers were either going or coming,
and the ships and the sand-pipers, and the
screaming gulls overhead ; nothing stood still
but the shore. The little beach-birds trotted
past close to the water's edge, or paused but an
instant to swallow their food, keeping time with
the elements. I wondered how they ever got
used to the sea, that they ventured so near the
waves. Such tiny inhabitants the land brought
forth ! except one fox. And what could a fox
do, looking on the Atlantic from that high bank ?
What is the sea to a fox ? Sometimes we met a
wrecker with his cart and dog, — and his dog's
faint bark at us wayfarers, heard through the
roaring of the surf, sounded ridiculously faint.
To see a little trembling dainty-footed cur stand
on the margin of the ocean, and ineffectually

§16 CAPE COD

bark at a beacli-bird. amid the roar of the At-
lantic I Come with desifrn to bark at a whale,
perchance I That sound will do for farmyards.
All the dogs looked out of place there, naked
and as if shudderinoj at the vastness: and I
thouirht that thev would not have been there
had it not been for the countenance of their
masters. Still less could vou think of a cat bend-

•

ing her steps that way. and shaking her wet foot
over the Atlantic; yet even this happens some-
times, thev tell me. In summer I saw the tender
voung of the Piping Plover, like chickens just
hatched, mere pinches of down on two legs,
running in troops, with a faint peep, along tli^
edge of the waves. T used to see packs of half-
wild doers hauntino: the lonelv beach on the south
shore of Staten Island, in New York Bav. for
the sake of the carrion there cast up : and I re-
member that once, when for a long time I had
heard a furious barkinij in the tall cvrass of the
marsh, a pack of half a dozen large dogs burst
forth on to the beach, pursuing a little one which
ran straight to me for protection, and I atTorded
it with some stones, thoujirli at some risk to mv-
self ; but the next day the little one was the first
to bark at me. I'nder these circumstances I
could not but remember the words of the poet : —

"Blow. blow, thou winter wind.
Thou .irt not sio unkind
As hi^ ingratitude; "

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 117

Thy tootli is not so keen.
Pocauso tluni art not seen.

Although tiiy breath l>e rude.

"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky.
Thou dost not bite so nigh

As IxMiofits forgvtt ;
Though thou the waters warp.
Thy sting is not so sliarp

As friend remembered not."

Sometimes, when I \Yas approaching the car-
cass of a horse or ox which hiv on the beach

4

there, where there was no hving creatnre in sight,
a dog wouKi unexpectedly emerge from it and
slink awav with a mouthful of otfal.

ft

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral OTOund, a most
advantageous point from which to contemplate
this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves
forever rollino- to the land are too far-travelled
and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along
the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the
foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product
of sea-slime.

It is a wild, rank place, and there is no flattery
in it. Strewn with crabs, horse-shoes, and razor-
clams, and whatever the sea casts up, — a vast
morgue, where famished dogs may range in packs,
and crows come daily to glean the pittance which
the tide leaves them. The carcasses of men and
beasts together lie stately up upon its shelf, rot-
tins: and bleachina: in the sun and waves, and

218 CAPE COD

each tide turns them in their beds, and tucks
fresh siind under them. There is naked Nature,
inhumanly sincere, wastino; no thouirht on man,
nibbHuir at the chtTv shore where irulls wheel
amid the spray.

We saw this forenoon what, at a distance,
looked like a bleached loo; with a branch still
left on it. It proved to be one of the principal
bones of a whale, whose carcass, haviufr been
stripped of blubber at sea and cut adrift, had
been washed up some months before. It chanced
that this was the most conclusive e%'idence which
we met with to prove, what the Copenhagen anti-
quaries assert, that these shores were the Fur-
dustrandas which Thoriiall. the companion of
Thorlinn during his expedition to Vinland in
1007. sailed past in disgust. It appears that after
they had left the Cape and explored the countn-
about Straum-Fiordr (^Buzzards' Bay I). Thor-
hall, who was disappointed at not getting any
wine to drink there, determined to sail north
asrain in search of Vinland. Thouijh the anti-
quaries have given us the original Icelandic. I
prefer to quote their translation, since theirs is
the onlv Latin which I know to have been aimed
at Cape Cod.

*"Cum p.irati erant. sublato
velo. cecinit Thorhallus:
Ex> redeamus. ubi conterranei
sunt nostri I faciamus alHer.

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 219

expansi arenosi pcritiim,
lata navis explorare curricula :
diim prcx^llam incitantes gladii
mon*" impatientes. qui terram
collaudant. Furdustrandas
inhabitant et coquunt balaenas."

In other words: "When thev were readv and
their sail hoisted. Tliorhall sanfj: Let us return
thither where our feUow-eountrvmen are. Let
us make a bird ' skilful to flv throuo-h the heaven
of sand,- to explore the broad track of ships;
while warriors who impel to the tempest of
swords,^ who praise the land, inhabit Wonder-
Strands, and cook wJialcs.'" And so he sailed
north past Cape Cod. as the antiquaries say,
"and was shipwrecked on to Ireland."

Though once there were more whales cast up
here, I think that it was never more wild than
now. We do not associate the idea of antiquity
with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a
thousand vears acjo, as we do of the land, for
it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
The Indians have left no traces on its surface,
but it is the same to the ci\'ilized man and the
savage. The aspect of the shore only has
chancred. The ocean is a wilderness reachins:
round tlie globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle,

* 7. f. a vessel.

' The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a
heaven.
' Battle.

220 CAPE COD

and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves
of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side
residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers, rap-
idly vanish as civilization advances, but the
most populous and civilized city cannot scare a
shark far from its wharves. It is no further ad-
vanced than Singapore, with its tigers, in this
respect. The Boston papers had never told me
that there were seals in the harbor. I had al-
ways associated these with the Esquimaux and
other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor
windows all along the coast you may see families
of them sporting on the flats. They were as
strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies
who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea.
To go to sea ! Why, it is to have the experience
of Noah, — to realize the deluge. Every vessel
is an ark.

We saw no fences as we walked the beach, no
birchen riders, highest of rails, projecting into
the sea to keep the cows from wading round,
nothing to remind us that man was proprietor of
the shore. Yet a Truro man did tell us that
owners of land on the east side of that town were
regarded as owning the beach, in order that they
might have the control of it so far as to defend
themselves against the encroachments of the
sand and the beach-grass, — for even this friend
is sometimes regarded as a foe ; but he said that
this was not the case on the Bay side. Also I

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 221

have seen in sheltered parts of the Bay tempo-
rary fences running to low-water mark, the posts
being set in sills or sleepers placed transversely.

After we had been walking many hours, the
mackerel fleet still hovered in the northern hori-
zon nearly in the same direction, but farther off,
hull down. Though their sails were set they
never sailed away, nor yet came to anchor, but
stood on various tacks as close together as vessels
in a haven, and we in our ignorance thought
that they were contending patiently with adverse
winds, beating eastward; but we learned after-
ward that they were even then on their fishing-
ground, and that they caught mackerel without
taking in their mainsails or coming to anchor,
"a smart breeze" (thence called a mackerel
breeze) '* being," as one says, "considered most
favorable" for this purpose. We counted about
two hundred sail of mackerel fishers within one
small arc of the horizon, and a nearly equal
number had disappeared southward. Thus
they hovered about the extremity of the Cape,
like moths round a candle; the lights at Race
Point and Long Point being bright candles for
them at night, — and at this distance they looked
fair and white, as if they had not yet flown into
the light, but nearer at hand afterward, we saw
how some had formerly singed their wings and
bodies.

A village seems thus, where its able-bodied

222 CAPE COD

men are all ploughing the ocean together, as a
common field. In North Truro the women and
girls may sit at their doors, and see where their
husbands and brothers are harvesting their mack-
erel fifteen or twenty miles oft', on the sea, with
hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the
country the farmers' wives sometimes see their
husbands working in a distant hillside field.
But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the
fisher's ear.

Having passed the narrowest part of the waist
of the Cape, though still in Truro, for this town-
ship is about twelve miles long on the shore, we
crossed over to the Bay side, not half a mile dis-
tant, in order to spend the noon on the nearest
shrubby sand-hill in Provincetown, called Mount
Ararat, which rises one hundred feet above the
ocean. On our way thither w^e had occasion to
admire the various beautiful forms and colors
of the sand, and we noticed an interesting mirage,
w^hich I have since found that Hitchcock also
observed on the sands of the Cape. We were
crossing a shallow valley in the Desert, where the
smooth and spotless sand sloped upward by a
small angle to the horizon on every side, and at
the lowest part was a long chain of clear but
shallow pools. As we were approaching these
for a drink in a diagonal direction across the
valley, they appeared inclined at a slight but de-
cided angle to the horizon, though they were

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 223

plainly and broadly connected with one another,
and there was not the least ripple to suggest a
current; so that by the time we had reached a
convenient part of one we seemed to have as-
cended several feet. They appeared to lie by
magic on the side of the vale, like a mirror left
in a slanting position. It was a very pretty
mirage for a Provincetown desert, but not
amounting to what, in Sanscrit, is called "the
thirst of the gazelle," as there was real water
here for a base, and we were able to quench our
thirst after all.

Professor Rafn, of Copenhagen, thinks that
the mirage which I noticed, but which an old
inhabitant of Provincetown, to whom I men-
tioned it, had never seen nor heard of, had some-
thing to do with the name "Furdustrandas,"
i. e. Wonder-Strands, given, as I have said, in
the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn's expedi-
tion to Vinland in the year 1007, to a part of the
coast on which he landed. But these sands are
more remarkable for their length than for their
mirage, which is common to all deserts, and the
reason for the name which the Northmen them-
selves give, — "because it took a long time to
sail by them," — is sufficient and more appli-
cable to these shores. However, if you should
sail all the way from Greenland to Buzzards'
Bay along the coast, you would get sight of a
good many sandy beaches. But whether Thor-

224 CAPE COD

finn saw the mirage here or not, Thor-eau, one
of the same family, did; and perchance it was
because Lief the Lucky had, in a previous voy-
age, taken Thor-er and his people off the rock
in the middle of the sea, that Thor-eau was born
to see it.

This was not the only mirage which I saw on
the Cape. That half of the beach next the bank
is commonly level, or nearly so, while the other
slopes downward to the water. As I was walk-
ing upon the edge of the bank in Wellfleet at
sundown, it seemed to me that the inside half of
the beach sloped upward toward the water to
meet the other, forming a ridge ten or twelve
feet high the whole length of the shore, but
higher always opposite to where I stood; and I
was not convinced of the contrary till I de-
scended the bank, though the shaded outlines
left by the waves of a previous tide but half-way
down the apparent declivity might have taught
me better. A stranger may easily detect what is
strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange
is his province. The old oysterman, speaking
of gull-shooting, had said that you must aim un-
der, when firing down the bank.

A neighbor tells me that one August, looking
through a glass from Naushon to some vessels
which were sailing along near Martha's Vine-
yard, the water about them appeared perfectly
smooth, so that they were reflected in it, and yet

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 225

their full sails proved that it must be rippled,
and they who were with him thought that it was
mirage, i. e. a reflection from a haze.

From the above-mentioned sand-hill we over-
looked Provincetown and its harbor, now emp-
tied of vessels, and also a wide expanse of ocean.
As we did not wish to enter Provincetown before
night, though it was cold and windy, we returned
across the Deserts to the Atlantic side, and
walked along the beach again nearly to Race
Point, being still greedy of the sea influence. All
the while it was not so calm as the reader may
suppose, but it was blow, blow, blow, — roar,
roar, roar, — tramp, tramp, tramp, — without
interruption. The shore now trended nearly
east and west.

Before sunset, having already seen the mack-
erel fleet returning into the Bay, we left the sea-
shore on the north of Provincetown, and made
our way across the Desert to the eastern ex-
tremity of the town. From the first high sand-
hill, covered with beach-grass and bushes to its
top, on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the
shrubby hill and swamp country which sur-
rounds Provincetown on the north, and protects
it, in some measure, from the invading sand.
Notwithstanding the universal barrenness, and
the contiguity of the desert, I never saw an au-
tumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this
was. It was like the richest rug imaginable

15

226 CAPE COD

spread over an uneven surface; no damask nor
velvet, nor Tvrian dve or stuli's, nor tlie work of
any loom, could ever match it. There was tlie
incredibly briirht i*ed of the Huckleberrv, and
the ivddish brown of the Bavberrv, niinirled with
the briojht and livinj;:: ^rreen of small Pitch-Pines,
and also the duller o-i^een of the Bavberrv, Box-
berrv, and Plum, the vellowish o-reen of the
Shrub-oaks, and the various ijolden and vellow
and fawn-colored tints of the Birch and ^laple
and Asj->en. — each making its own tigure. and,
in the midst, the few vellow sand-slides on the
sides of the hills looked like the white floor seen
throuirh i*ents in the ruij. Comino: from the
countrv as I did, and manv autumnal woods as
I had seen, this was perhaps the most novel and
remarkable sight that I saw on the Cape. Prob-
ablv the briijhtness of the tints was enhanced bv
contrast with the sand which surrounded this
tract. This was a part of the furniture of Cape
Cod. We had for days walked up the long and
bleak piazza which runs along her Atlantic side,
then over the sanded floor of her halls, and now
we were beina: introduced into her boudoir. The
hundred white sails crowdinor round Lon^; Point
into Provincetown Harbor, seen over the painted
hills in front, looked like toy ships upon a
mantel-piece.

The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape
consisted in the lowness and thickness of the

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 227

shrubbery, no less than in the brightness of the
tints. It was like a thick stuff of worsted or a
fleece, and looked as if a giant could take it up
by the hem, or rather the tasselled fringe which
trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it
needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the dust
would fly in that case, for not a little has ac-
cumulated underneath it. Was it not such an
autumnal landscape as this which suggested our
high-colored rugs and carpets ? Hereafter when
I look on a richer rug than usual, and study its
figures, I shall think, there are the huckleberry
hills, and there the denser swamps of boxberry
and blueberry : there the shrub-oak patches and
the bayberries, there the maples and the birches
and the pines. What other dyes are to be com-
pared to these ? They were warmer colors than
I had associated with the New England coast.

After threading a swamp full of boxberry, and
climbing several hills covered with shrub-oaks,
without a path, where shipwrecked men would
be in danger of perishing in the night, we came
down upon the eastern extremity of the four
planks which run the whole length of Province-
town street. This, which is the last town on the
Cape, lies mainly in one street along the curving
beach fronting the southeast. The sand-hills,
covered with shrubbery and interposed with
swamps and ponds, rose immediately behind it
in the form of a crescent, which is from half a

228 CAPE COD

mile to a mile or more wide in the middle, and
beyond these is the desert, which is the greater
part of its territory, stretching to the sea on the
east and west and north. The town is com-
pactly built in the narrow space, from ten to
fifty rods deep, between the harbor and the sand-
hills, and contained at that time about twenty-
six hundred inhabitants. The houses, in which
a more modern and pretending style has at length
prevailed over the fisherman's hut, stand on the
inner or plank side of the street, and the fish and
store houses, with the picturesque-looking wind-
mills of the Salt-works, on the water side. The
narrow portion of the beach between, forming the
street, about eighteen feet wide, the only one
where one carriage could pass another, if there
was more than one carriage in the town, looked
much "heavier" than any portion of the beach
or the desert which we had walked on, it being
above the reach of the highest tide, and the sand
being kept loose by the occasional passage of a
traveller. We learned that the four planks on
which we were walking had been bought by the
town's share of the Surplus Revenue, the dis-
position of which was a bone of contention be-
tween the inhabitants, till they wisely resolved
thus to put it under foot. Yet some, it was said,
were so provoked because they did not receive
their particular share in money, that they per-
sisted in walking in the sand a long time after

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 229

the sidewalk was built. This is the only instance
which I happen to know in which the surplus
revenue proved a blessing to any town. A sur-
plus revenue of dollars from the treasury to stem
the greater evil of a surplus revenue of sand from
the ocean. They expected to make a hard road
by the time these planks were worn out. Indeed,
they have already done so since we were there,
and have almost forgotten their sandy baptism.

As we passed along we observed the inhabi-
tants engaged in curing either fish or the coarse
salt hay which they had brought home and
spread on the beach before their doors, looking
as yellow as if they had raked it out of the sea.
The front-yard plots appeared like what indeed
they were, portions of the beach fenced in, with
Beach-grass growing in them, as if they were
sometimes covered by the tide. You might still
pick up shells and pebbles there. There were a
few trees among the houses, especially silver
abeles, willows, and balm-of-Gileads ; and one
man showed me a young oak which he had trans-
planted from behind the town, thinking it an
apple-tree. But every man to his trade. Though
he had little woodcraft, he was not the less
weatherwise, and gave us one piece of informa-
tion; viz., he had observed that when a thunder-
cloud came up with a flood-tide it did not rain.
This was the most completely maritime town
that we were ever in. It was merely a good

230 CAPE COD

harbor, surrounded by land dry, if not firm, —
an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured
and stored their fish, without any back country.
When ashore the inhabitants still walk on planks.
A few small patches have been reclaimed from
the swamps, containing commonly half a dozen
square rods only each. We saw one which was
fenced with four lengths of rail ; also a fence
made wholly of hogshead-staves stuck in the
ground. These, and such as these, were all the
cultivated and cultivable land in Provincetown.
We were told that there were thirty or forty
acres in all, but we did not discover a quarter
part so much, and that was well dusted with
sand, and looked as if the desert was claiming
it. They are now turning some of their swamps
into Cranberry Meadows on quite an extensive
scale.

Yet far from being out of the way. Province-
town is directly in the way of the navigator, and
he is lucky who does not run afoul of it in the
dark. It is situated on one of the highways of
commerce, and men from all parts of the globe
touch there in the course of a year.

The mackerel fleet had nearly all got in before
us, it being Saturday night, excepting that divi-
sion which had stood down towards Chatham
in the morning ; and from a hill where we went
to see the sun set in the Bay we counted two hun-
dred goodly looking schooners at anchor in the

I

I

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 231

harbor at various distances from the shore, and
more were yet coming round the Cape. As each
came to anchor, it took in sail and swung round
in the wind, and kiwered its boat. They be-
kmged chiefly to Wcllfleet, Truro, and Cape Ann.
This wa^ji that city of canvas which we had seen
hull down in the horizon. Near at hand, and
under bare poles, they were unexpectedly black-
lookine: vessels, fieXaivai i^^ev. A fisherman told
us that there were fifteen hundred vessels in the
mackerel fleet, and that he had counted three
hundred and fiftv in Provincetown Harbor at
one time. Beiuix obliaied to anchor at a consider-
able distance from the shore on account of the
shallowness of the water, thev made the im-
pression of a larger fleet than the vessels at the
wharves of a large citv. As thev had been ma-
na?uvrin<]: out there aJl dav seeminglv for our
entertainment, while we were walking north-
westward along the Atlantic, so now we found
them flockincj into Provincetown Harbor at
night, just as we arrived, as if to meet us, and
exhibit themselves close at hand. Standing by
Race Point and Long Point with various speed,
thev reminded me of fowls coming home to
roost.

These were genuine New England vessels. It
is stated in the Journal of Moses Prince, a brother
of the annalist, under date of 17'-21, at which time
he visited Gloucester, that the first vessel of the

232 CAPE COD

class called schooner was built at Gloucester
about eight years before, by Andrew Robinson ;
and late in the same century one Cotton Tufts
gives us the tradition with some particulars,
which he learned on a visit to the same place.
According to the latter, Robinson having con-
structed a vessel which he masted and rigged in
a peculiar manner, on her going off the stocks a
bystander cried out, "O, how she scoons!''
whereat Robinson replied, "A schooner let her
he!" "From which time," says Tufts, "vessels
thus masted and rigged have gone by the name
of schooners; before which, vessels of this de-
scription were not known in Europe." (See
Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. IX., 1st Series, and Vol. I.,
4th Series.) Yet I can hardly believe this, for a
schooner has always seemed to me — the typical
vessel.

According to C. E. Potter of Manchester, New
Hampshire, the very word schooner is of New
England origin, being from the Indian schoon
or scoot, meaning to rush, as Schoodic, from
scoot and anke, a place where water rushes.
N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to read a
paper on this matter before a genealogical society,
in Boston, March 3, 1859, according to the
Boston Journal, q. v.

Nearly all who come out must walk on the
four planks which I have mentioned, so that you
are pretty sure to meet all the inhabitants of

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 233

Provincetown who come out in the course of a
day, provided you keep out yourself. This even-
ing the planks were crowded with mackerel
fishers, to whom we gave and from whom we
took the wall, as we returned to our hotel. This
hotel was kept by a tailor, his shop on the one
side of the door, his hotel on the other, and his
day seemed to be divided between carving meat
and carving broadcloth.

The next morning, though it was still more
cold and blustering than the day before, we took
to the Deserts agaiii, for we spent our days wholly
out of doors, in the sun when there was any, and
in the wind which never failed. After threading
the shrubby hill country at the southwest end of
the town, west of the Shank-Painter Swamp,
whose expressive name — for we understood it
at first as a landsman naturally would — gave it
importance in our eyes, we crossed the sands to
the shore south of Race Point and three miles dis-
tant, and thence roamed round eastward through
the desert to where we had left the sea the evening
before. We travelled five or six miles after we
got out there, on a curving line, and might have
gone nine or ten, over vast platters of pure sand,
from the midst of which we could not see a par-
ticle of vegetation, excepting the distant thin
fields of Beach-grass, which crowned and made
the ridges toward which the sand sloped upward
on each side ; — all the while in the face of a

234 CAPE COD

cutting wind as cold as January; indeed, we
experienced no weather so cold as this for nearly
two months afterward. This desert extends
from the extremity of the Cape, through Prov-
incetown into Truro, and many a time as we
were traversing it we were reminded of "Riley's
Narrative" of his captivity in the sands of Ara-
bia, notwithstanding the cold. Our eyes mag-
nified the patches of Beach-grass into cornfields
in the horizon, and we probably exaggerated the
height of the ridges on account of the mirage.
I was pleased to learn afterward, from Kalm's
Travels in North America, that the inhabitants
of the Lower St. Lawrence call this grass {Cal-
amagrostis arenaria), and also Sea-lyme grass
(Elymus arenarius), seigle de mer; and he adds,
"I have been assured that these plants grow in
great plenty in Newfoundland, and on other
North American shores ; the places covered with
them looking, at a distance, like cornfields;
which might explain the passage in our northern
accounts [he wrote in 1749] of the excellent wine
land [Vinland det goda. Translator], which men-
tions that they had found whole fields of wheat
growing wild."

The Beach-grass is "two to four feet high, of
a seagreen color," and it is said to be widely
diffused over the world. In the Hebrides it is
used for mats, pack-saddles, bags, hats, etc. ;
paper has been made of it at Dorchester in this

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 235

State, and cattle eat it when tender. It has heads
somewhat like rye, from six inches to a foot in
length, and it is propagated both by roots and
seeds. To express its love for sand, some botan-
ists have called it Psamma arenaria, which is the
Greek for sand, qualified by the Latin for sandy,
— or sandy sand. As it is blown about by the
wind, while it is held fast by its roots, it describes
myriad circles in the sand as accurately as if they
were made by compasses.

It was the dreariest scenery imaginable. The
only animals which we saw on the sand at that
time were spiders, which are to be found almost
everywhere whether on snow or ice-water or
sand, — and a venomous-looking, long, narrow
worm, one of the myriapods, or thousand-legs.
We were surprised to see spider-holes in that
flowing sand with an edge as firm as that of a
stoned well.

In June this sand was scored with the tracks
of turtles both large and small, which had been
out in the night, leading to and from the swamps.
I was told by a terrce filius who has a "farm" on
the edge of the desert, and is familiar with the
fame of Provincetown, that one man had caught
twenty-five snapping-turtles there the previous
spring. His own method of catching them was
to put a toad on a mackerel-hook and cast it into
a pond, tying the line to a stump or stake
on shore. Invariably the turtle when hooked

236 CAPE COD

crawled up the line to the stump, and was found
waiting there by his captor, however long after-
ward. He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes,
coons, and wild mice were found there, but no
squirrels. We heard of sea- turtle as large as a
barrel being found on the beach and on East
Harbor marsh, but whether they were native
there, or had been lost out of some vessel, did not
appear. Perhaps they were the Salt-water Ter-
rapin, or else the Smooth Terrapin, found thus
far north. Many toads were met with where
there was nothing but sand and beach-grass. In
Truro I had been surprised at the number of
large light-colored toads everywhere hopping
over the dry and sandy fields, their color corre-
sponding to that of the sand. Snakes also are
common on these pure sand beaches, and I have
never been so much troubled by mosquitoes as
in such localities. At the same season straw-
berries grew there abundantly in the little hol-
lows on the edge of the desert standing amid the
beach-grass in the sand, and the fruit of the shad-
bush or Amelanchier, which the inhabitants call
Josh-pears (some think from juicy .'^), is very
abundant on the hills. I fell in with an obliging
man who conducted me to the best locality for
strawberries. He said that he would not have
shown me the place if he had not seen that I was
a stranger, and could not anticipate him another
year; I therefore feel bound in honor not to re-

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 237

veal it. When we came to a pond, he being the
native did the honors and carried me over on
his shoulders, like Sindbad. One good turn de-
serves another, and if he ever comes our way I
will do as much for him.

In one place we saw numerous dead tops of
trees projecting through the otherwise uninter-
rupted desert, where, as we afterward learned,
thirty or forty years before a flourishing forest
had stood, and now, as the trees were laid bare
from year to year, the inhabitants cut off their
tops for fuel.

We saw nobody that day outside of the town ;
it was too wintry for such as had seen the Back-
side before, or for the greater number who never
desire to see it, to venture out; and we saw
hardly a track to show that any had ever crossed
this desert. Yet I was told that some are always
out on the Back-side night and day in severe
weather, looking for wrecks, in order that they
may get the job of discharging the cargo, or the
like, — and thus shipwrecked men are succored.
But, generally speaking, the inhabitants rarely
visit these sands. One who had lived in Prov-
incetown thirty years told me that he had not
been through to the north side within that time.
Sometimes the natives themselves come near
perishing by losing their way in snow-storms
behind the town.

The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such

238 CAPE COD

as we associate with the desert, but a New Eng-
land northeaster, — and we sought shelter in
vain under the sand-hills, for it blew all about
them, rounding them into cones, and was sure
to find us out on whichever side we sat. From
time to time we lay down and drank at little pools
in the sand, filled with pure fresh water, all that
was left, probably, of a pond or swamp. The
air was filled with dust like snow, and cutting
sand which made the face tingle, and we saw
what it must be to face it when the weather was
drier, and, if possible, windier still, — to face a
migrating sand-bar in the air, which has picked
up its duds and is off, — to be whipped with a
cat, not o' nine-tails, but of a myriad of tails, and
each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whitman, a former
minister of Wellfleet, used to write to his inland
friends that the blowing sand scratched the win-
dows so that he was obliged to have one new
pane set every week, that he might see out.

On the edge of the shrubby woods the sand
had the appearance of an inundation which was
overwhelming them, terminating in an abrupt
bank many feet higher than the surface on which
they stood, and having partially buried the out-
side trees. The moving sand-hills of England,
called Dunes or Downs, to which these have been
likened, are either formed of sand cast up by the
sea, or of sand taken from the land itself in the
first place by the wind, and driven still farther

■TmC-

<f~^"

'M
}

S
-I

tmH

i

i

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 239

inward. It is here a tide of sand impelled by
waves and wind, slowly flowing from the sea
toward the town. The northeast winds are said
to be the strongest, but the northwest to move
most sand, because they are the driest. On the
shore of the Bay of Biscay many villages were
formerly destroyed in this way. Some of the
ridges of beach-grass which we saw were planted
by government many years ago, to preserve the
harbor of Provincetown and the extremity of the
Cape. I talked with some who had been em-
ployed in the planting. In the "Description of
the Eastern Coast," which I have already re-
ferred to, it is said: "Beach-grass during the
spring and summer grows about two feet and a
half. If surrounded by naked beach, the storms
of autumn and winter heap up the sand on all
sides, and cause it to rise nearly to the top of the
plant. In the ensuing spring the grass mounts
anew ; is again covered with sand in the winter ;
and thus a hill or ridge continues to ascend as
long as there is a sufficient base to support it,
or till the circumscribing sand, being also cov-
ered with beach-grass, will no longer yield to
the force of the winds." Sand-hills formed in
this way are sometimes one hundred feet high
and of every variety of form, like snow-drifts, or
Arab tents, and are continually shifting. The
grass roots itself very firmly. When I endeav-
ored to pull it up, it usually broke off ten inches

240 CAPE COD

or a foot below the surface, at what had been the
surface the year before, as appeared by the num-
erous offshoots there, it being a straight, hard,
round shoot, showing by its length how much
the sand had accumulated the last year; and
sometimes the dead stubs of a previous season
were pulled up with it from still deeper in the
sand, with their own more decayed shoot at-
tached, — so that the age of a sand-hill, and its
rate of increase for several years, is pretty accu-
rately recorded in this way.

Old Gerard, the English herbalist, says, p.
1250: "I find mention in Stowe's Chronicle, in
Anno 1555, of a certain pulse or pease, as they
term it, wherewith the poor people at that time,
there being a great dearth, were miraculously
helped: he thus mentions it. In the month of
August (saith he), in Suft'olke, at a place by the
sea side all of hard stone and pibble, called in
those parts a shelf, lying between the towns of
Orford and iVldborough, where neither grew
grass nor any earth was ever seen ; it chanced in
this barren place suddenly to spring up without
any tillage or sowing, great abundance of peason,
whereof the poor gathered (as men judged) above
one hundred quarters, yet remained some ripe
and some blossoming, as many as ever there were
before: to the which place rode the Bishop of
Norwich and the Lord Willoughby, with others
in great number, who found nothing but hard,

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 241

rocky stone the space of three yards under the
roots of these peason, which roots were great and
long, and very sweet." He tells us also that
Gesner learned from Dr. Cajus that there were
enough there to supply thousands of men. He
goes on to say that "they without doubt grew
there many years before, but were not observed
till hunger made them take notice of them, and
quickened their invention, which commonly in
our people is very dull, especially in finding out
food of this nature. My worshipful friend Dr.
Argent hath told me that many years ago he was
in this place, and caused his man to pull among
the beach with his hands, and follow the roots so
long until he got some equal in length unto his
height, yet could come to no ends of them."
Gerard never saw them, and is not certain what
kind they were.

In Dwight's Travels in New England it is
stated that the inhabitants of Truro were for-
merly regularly warned under the authority of
law in the month of April yearly, to plant beach-
grass, as elsewhere they are warned to repair the
highways. They dug up the grass in bunches,
which were afterward divided into several smaller
ones, and set about three feet apart, in rows, so
arranged as to break joints and obstruct the
passage of the wind. It spread itself rapidly, the
weight of the seeds when ripe bending the heads
of the grass, and so dropping directly by its side

16

242 CAPE COD

and vegetating there. In this way, for instance,
they built up again that part of the Cape between
Truro and Provincetown where the sea broke
over in the last century. They have now a pub-
lic road near there, made by laying sods, which
were full of roots, bottom upward and close to-
gether on the sand, double in the middle of the
track, then spreading brush evenly over the sand
on each side for half a dozen feet, planting beach-
grass on the banks in regular rows, as above de-
scribed, and sticking a fence of brush against the
hollows.

The attention of the general government was
first attracted to the danger which threatened
Cape Cod Harbor from the inroads of the sand,
about thirty years ago, and commissioners were
at that time appointed by Massachusetts, to ex-
amine the premises. They reported in June,
1825, that, owing to "the trees and brush having
been cut down, and the beach-grass destroyed
on the seaward side of the Cape, opposite the
Harbor," the original surface of the ground had
been broken up and removed by the wind toward
the Harbor, — during the previous fourteen
years, — over an extent of "one half a mile in
breadth, and about four and a half miles in
length." — "The space where a few years since
were some of the highest lands on the Cape, cov-
ered with trees and bushes," presenting "an
extensive waste of undulating sand " ; — and

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 243

that, during the previous twelve months, the
sand "had approached the Harbor an average
distance of fifty rods, for an extent of four and a
half miles!" and unless some measures were
adopted to check its progress, it would in a few
years destroy both the harbor and the town.
They therefore recommended that beach-grass
be set out on a curving line over a space ten rods
wide and four and a half miles long, and that
cattle, horses, and sheep be prohibited from
going abroad, and the inhabitants from cutting
the brush.

I was told that about thirty thousand dollars
in all had been appropriated to this object, though
it was complained that a great part of this was
spent foolishly, as the public money is wont to
be. Some say that while the government is
planting beach-grass behind the town for the
protection of the harbor, the inhabitants are roll-
ing the sand into the harbor in wheelbarrows, in
order to make house-lots. The Patent-OflBce
has recently imported the seed of this grass from
Holland, and distributed it over the country, but
probably we have as much as the Hollanders.

Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, as
it were, by a myriad little cables of beach-grass,
and, if they should fail, would become a total
wreck, and erelong go to the bottom. Formerly,
the cows were permitted to go at large, and they
ate many strands of the cable by which the Cape

244 CAPE COD

is moored, and well-nigh set it adrift, as the bull
did the boat which was moored with a grass rope ;
but now they are not permitted to wander.

A portion of Truro which has considerable
taxable property on it has lately been added to
Provincetown, and I was told by a Truro man
that his townsmen talked of petitioning the leg-
islature to set off the next mile of their territory
also to Provincetown, in order that she might
have her share of the lean as well as the fat, and
take care of the road through it; for its whole
value is literally to hold the Cape together, and
even this it has not always done. But Province-
town strenuously declines the gift.

The wind blowed so hard from the northeast
that, cold as it was, we resolved to see the break-
ers on the Atlantic side, whose din we had heard
all the morning ; so we kept on eastward through
the Desert, till we struck the shore again north-
east of Provincetown, and exposed ourselves to
the full force of the piercing blast. There are
extensive shoals there over which the sea broke
with great force. For half a mile from the shore
it was one mass of white breakers, which, with
the wind, made such a din that we could
hardly hear ourselves speak. Of this part of the
coast it is said: "A northeast storm, the most
violent and fatal to seamen, as it is frequently
accompanied with snow, blows directly on the
land : a strong current sets along the shore ; add

-^

5-.

-Si

r5>

^

,

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 245

to which that ships, during the operation of such
a storm, endeavor to work northward, that they
may get into the bay. Should they be unable to
weather Race Point, the wind drives them on the
shore, and a shipwreck is inevitable. Accord-
ingly, the strand is everywhere covered with the
fragments of vessels." But since the Highland
Light was erected, this part of the coast is less
dangerous, and it is said that more shipwrecks
occur south of that light, where they were scarcely
known before.

This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,
— more tumultuous, my companion affirmed,
than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a
far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a
clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which
labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a
harbor. It was high tide when we reached the
shore, and in one place, for a considerable dis-
tance, each wave dashed up so high that it was
difficult to pass between it and the bank. Fur-
ther south, where the bank was higher, it would
have been dangerous to attempt it. A native of
the Cape has told me that, many years ago, three
boys, his playmates, having gone to this beach
in Wellfleet to visit a wreck, when the sea receded
ran down to the wreck, and when it came in ran
before it to the bank, but the sea following fast
at their heels, caused the bank to cave and bury
them alive.

246 CAPE COD

It was the roaring sea, dakaaaa rj^n^traa^ —

a/i,<pi oe T aKpaL
Hioves fioooHTLv, epcvyo/Aci'?;? ctAos t^w-

And the summits of the bank
Around resound, the sea being vomited forth.

As we stood looking on this scene we were
gradually convinced that fishing here and in a
pond were not, in all respects, the same, and that
he who waits for fair weather and a calm sea
may never see the glancing skin of a mackerel,
and get no nearer to a cod than the wooden
emblem in the State House.

Having lingered on the shore till we were
well-nigh chilled to death by the wind, and were
ready to take shelter in a Charity-house, we
turned our weather-beaten faces toward Prov-
incetown and the Bay again, having now more
than doubled the Cape.

PROVINCETOWN

EARLY the next morning I walked into a
fish-house near our hotel, where three or
four men were engaged in trundling out
the pickled fish on barrows, and spreading them
to dry. They told me that a vessel had lately
come in from the Banks with forty-four thousand
codfish. Timothy Dwight says that, just before
he arrived at Provincetown, "a schooner come
in from the Great Bank with fifty-six thousand
fish, almost one thousand five hundred quintals,
taken in a single voyage; the main deck being,
on her return, eight inches under water in calm
weather." The cod in this fish-house, just out
of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and
three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots,
pitching them on to the barrows with an instru-
ment which had a single iron point. One young
man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish re-
peatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when that older
man sees you he will speak to you. But pres-
ently I saw the older man do the same thing. It
reminded me of the figs of Smyrna. "How long
does it take to cure these fish .^" I asked.

248 CAPE COD

*'Two good dn'ing days, sir," was the answer.

I walked across the street again into the hotel
to breakfast, and mine host inquired if I would
take "hashed fish or beans." I took beans,
though they never were a favorite dish of mine.
I found next summer that this was still the only
alternative proposed here, and the landlord was
still ringing the changes on these two words. In
the former dish there was a remarkable propor-
tion of fish. As you travel inland the potato pre-
dominates. It chanced that I did not taste fresh
fish of any kind on the Cape, and I was assured
that they were not so much used there as in the
country-. That is where they are cured, and
where, sometimes, travellers are cured of eating
them. No fresh meat was slaughtered in Prov-
incetown, but the little that was used at the
public houses was brought from Boston by the
steamer.

A great many of the houses here were sur-
rounded by fish-flakes close up to the sills on all
sides, with only a narrow passage two or three
feet wide, to the front door; so that instead of
looking out into a flower or grass plot, you looked
on to so many square rods of cod turned WTong
side outwards. These parterres were said to be
least like a flower-garden in a good dry-ing day
in mid-summer. There were flakes of everv age
and pattern, and some so rusty and overgrown
with lichens that they looked as if they might

-Sf*"^"'-rff^ir^j«^-

PROVINCETOWN 249

have served the founders of the fishery here.
Some had broken down under the weight of suc-
cessive harvests. The principal employment of
the inhabitants at this time seemed to be to
trundle out their fish and spread them in the
morning, and bring them in at night. I saw how
many a loafer who chanced to be out early enough
got a job at wheeling out the fish of his neighbor
who was anxious to improve the whole of a fair
day. Now, then, I knew where salt fish were
caught. Thev were everywhere Ivins: on their
backs, their collar-bones standing out like the
lapels of a man-o'-war-man's jacket, and invit-
ing all things to come and rest in their bosoms;
and all things, with a few exceptions, accepted
the invitation. I think, by the way, that if you
should wrap a large salt fish round a small boy,
he would have a coat of such a fashion as I have
seen many a one wear to muster. Salt fish were
stacked up on the wharves, looking like corded
wood, maple and yellow birch with the bark
left on. I mistook them for this at first, and such
in one sense they were, — fuel to maintain our
vital fires, — an eastern wood which grew on the
Grand Banks. Some were stacked in the form of
huge flower-pots, being laid in small circles with
the tails outwards, each circle successively larger
than the preceding until the pile was three or four
feet high, when the circles rapidly diminished,
so as to form a conical roof. On the shores of

^250 CAPE COD

New Brunswick this is covered "VN'itli birch-bark,
and stones are placed upon it, and being thus
rendered imperv-ious to the rain, it is left to
season before being packed for exportation.

It is rumored that in the fall the cows here are
sometimes fed on cod's-heads I The godlike part
of the cod. which, like the human head, is curi-
ously and wonderfully made, forsooth has but
little less brain in it, — comino; to such an end I
to be craunched bv cows I I felt mv own skull
crack from sympathy. ^Yhat if the heads of men
were to be cut olf to feed the cows of a superior
order of bcinirs who inhabit the islands in the
ether ? Awav iroes vour tine brain, the house of
thoucrht and instinct, to swell the cud of a ru-
minant animal I — However, an inhabitant as-
sured me that they did not make a practice of
feediuii cows on cod's-heads ; the cows raerelv
would eat them sometimes ; but I mii^ht live
there all mv davs and never see it done. A cow
wanting salt would also sometimes lick out all the
soft part of a cod on the flakes. This he would
have me believe was the foundation of this lish-
stors'.

It has been a constant traveller's tale and per-
haps slander, now for thousands of years, the
Latins and Greeks have repeated it, that this or
that nation feeds its cattle, or horses, or sheep,
on fish, as mav be seen in G^lian and Plinv, but
in the Journal of Xearchus, who was Alexander's

PROVINCEIOWN 251

admiral, and made a vovatro from the Indus to
the Euphrates three hundred and twenty-six
years before Christ, it is said that the inhabitants
of a portion of the intermediate eoast, whom he
caHed Ichthyophagi or Fish-eaters, not only ate
fishes raw and also dried and pounded in a
whak^'s vertebra for a mortar and made into a
paste, but gave them to their eattle, there being
no ijrass on the eoast; and several modern trav-
ellers — Bravbosa, Niebuhr, and others — make
tlie same report. Therefore in balaneing the
evidence I am still in doubt about the Province-
town cows. As for other domestic animals.
Captain King in his continuation of Captain
Cook's Journal in 1779, says of the dogs of
Kamtschatka, "Their food in the winter con-
sists entirelv of the heads, entrail, and back-
bones of salmon, which are put aside and dried
for that purpose; and with this diet they are
fed but sparingly." (Cook's Journal, Vol. VII.,
p. 315.)

As we are treatinii: of fishv matters, let me in-
sert what Plinv savs, that "the commanders of
the fleets of Alexander the Great have related
that the Gedrosi, who dwell on the banks of the
river Arabis, are in the habit of making the doors
of their houses with the jaw-bones of fishes, and
raftering the roofs with their bones." Strabo
tells the same of the Ichthyophagi. "Ilardouin
remarks that the Basques of his day were in the

252 CAPE COD

habit of fencing their gardens with the ribs of the
whale, which sometimes exceeded twenty feet
in length ; and Cuvier says that at the present
time the jaw-bone of the whale is used in Nor-
way for the purpose of making beams or posts
for buildings." (Bohn's ed., trans, of Pliny,
Vol. II., p. 361.) Herodotus says the inhabi-
tants on Lake Prasias in Thrace (living on piles)
"give fish for fodder to their horses and beasts
of burden."

Provincetown was apparently what is called a
flourishing town. Some of the inhabitants asked
me if I did not think that they appeared to be
well off generally. I said that I did, and asked
how many there were in the almshouse. *'0,
only one or two, infirm or idiotic," answered
they. The outward aspect of the houses and
shops frequently suggested a poverty which their
interior comfort and even richness disproved.
You might meet a lady daintily dressed in the
Sabbath morning, wading in among the sand-
hills, from church, where there appeared no
house fit to receive her, yet no doubt the interior
of the house answered to the exterior of the lady.
As for the interior of the inhabitants I am still
in the dark about it. I had a little intercourse
with some whom I met in the street, and was
often agreeably disappointed by discovering the
intelligence of rough, and what would be con-
sidered unpromising specimens. Nay, I ven-

PROVINCETOWN 253

tured to call on one citizen the next summer, by
special invitation. I found him sitting in his front
doorway, that Sabbath evening, prepared for me
to come in unto him ; but unfortunately for his
reputation for keeping open house, there was
stretched across his gateway a circular cobweb
of the largest kind and quite entire. This looked
so ominous that I actually turned aside and went
in the back way.

This Monday morning was beautifully mild
and calm, both on land and water, promising us
a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fisher-
men feared that it would not be so good a drying
day as the cold and windy one which preceded
it. There could hardly have been a greater
contrast. This was the first of the Indian sum-
mer days, though at a late hour in the morning
we found the wells in the sand behind the town
still covered with ice, which had formed in the
night. What with wind and sun my most prom-
inent feature fairly cast its slough. But I assure
you it will take more than two good drying days
to cure me of rambling. After making an ex-
cursion among the hills in the neighborhood of the
Shank-Painter Swamp, and getting a little work
done in its line, we took our seat upon the highest
sand-hill overlooking the town, in mid-air, on a
long plank stretched across between two hillocks
of sand, where some boys were endeavoring in
vain to fly their kite ; and there we remained the

254 CAPE COD

rest of that forenoon looking out over the placid
harbor, and watching for the first appearance of
the steamer from Wellfleet, that we might be in
readiness to go on board when we heard the
whistle off Long Point.

We got what we could out of the boys in the
meanwhile. Provincetown boys are of course all
sailors and have sailors' eyes. When we were
at the Highland Light the last summer, seven
or eight miles from Provincetown Harbor, and
wished to know one Sunday morning if the
Olata, a well-known yacht, had got in from Bos-
ton, so that we could return in her, a Province-
town boy about ten years old, who chanced to
be at the table, remarked that she had. I asked
him how he knew. "I just saw her come in,"
said he. When I expressed surprise that he
could distinguish her from other vessels so far,
he said that there were not so many of those two-
topsail schooners about but that he could tell
her. Palfrey said, in his oration at Barnsta-
ble, the duck does not take to the water with
a surer instinct than the Barnstable boy. [He
might have said the Cape Cod boy as well.] He
leaps from his leading-strings into the shrouds,
it is but a bound from the mother's lap to the
masthead. He boxes the compass in his infant
soliloquies. He can hand, reef, and steer by the
time he flies a kite.

This was the very day one would have chosen

PROVINCETOWN ^55

to sit upon a hill overlooking sea and land, and
muse there. The mackerel fleet was rapidly tak-
ing its departure, one schooner after another, and
standing round the Cape, like fowls leaving their
roosts in the morning to disperse themselves in
distant fields. The turtle-like sheds of the salt-
works were crowded into every nook in the hills,
immediately behind the town, and their now
idle windmills lined the shore. It was worth the
while to see by what coarse and simple chemistry
this almost necessary of life is obtained, with the
sun for journeyman, and a single apprentice to
do the chores for a large establishment. It is
a sort of tropical labor, pursued too in the
sunniest season; more interesting than gold or
diamond-washing, which, I fancy, it somewhat
resembles at a distance. In the production of
the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to
assist man. So at the potash works which I have
seen at Hull, where they burn the stems of the
kelp and boil the ashes. Verily, chemistry is
not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a
dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory. It is said,
that owing to the reflection of the sun from the
sand-hills, and there being absolutely no fresh
water emptying into the harbor, the same num-
ber of superficial feet yields more salt here than
in any other part of the county. A little rain is
considered necessary to clear the air, and make
salt fast and good, for as paint does not dry, so

256 CAPE COD

water does not evaporate in dog-day weather.
But they were now, as elsewhere on the Cape,
breaking up their salt-works and selling them
for lumber.

From that elevation we could overlook the
operations of the inhabitants almost as com-
pletely as if the roofs had been taken off. They
were busily covering the wicker-worked flakes
about their houses with salted fish, and we now
saw that the back yards were improved for this
purpose as much as the front ; where one man's
fish ended another's began. In almost every
yard we detected some little building from which
these treasures were being trundled forth and
systematically spread, and we saw that there was
an art as well as a knack even in spreading fish,
and that a division of labor was profitably prac-
tised. One man was withdrawing his fishes a
few inches beyond the nose of his neighbor's
cow which had stretched her neck over a paling
to get at them. It seemed a quite domestic em-
ployment, like drying clothes, and indeed in some
parts of the county the women take part in it.

I noticed in several places on the Cape a sort of
clothes-^aA^e^. They spread brush on the ground,
and fence it round, and then lay their clothes on
it, to keep them from the sand. This is a Cape
Cod clothes-yard.

The sand is the great enemy here. The tops
of some of the hills were enclosed and a board

PROVINCETOWN 257

put up, forbidding all persons entering the en-
closure, lest their feet should disturb the sand,
and set it a-blowing or a-sliding. The inhabi-
tants are obliged to get leave from the authorities
to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes, bean-
poles, pea-brush, and the like, though, as we
were told, they may transplant trees from one
part of the township to another without leave.
The sand drifts like snow, and sometimes the
lower story of a house is concealed by it, though
it is kept off by a wall. The houses were for-
merly built on piles, in order that the driving
sand might pass under them. We saw a few old
ones here still standing on their piles, but they
were boarded up now, being protected by their
younger neighbors. There was a school-house,
just under the hill on which we sat, filled with
sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course
the master and scholars had fled. Perhaps they
had imprudently left the windows open one day,
or neglected to mend a broken pane. Yet in
one place was advertised "Fine sand for sale
here," — I could hardly believe my eyes, —
probably some of the street sifted, — a good in-
stance of the fact that a man confers a value on
the most worthless thing by mixing himself with
it, according to which rule we must have con-
ferred a value on the whole back-side of Cape
Cod ; — but I thought that if they could have

advertised *'Fat Soil," or perhaps "Fine sand

17

258 CAPE COD

got rid of," ay, and *' Shoes emptied here," it
would have been more alluring. As we looked
down on the town, I thought that I saw one man,
who probably lived beyond the extremity of the
planking, steering and tacking for it in a sort of
snow-shoes, but I may have been mistaken. In
some pictures of Provincetown the persons of
the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles,
so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
Nevertheless, natives of Provincetown assured
me that they could walk in the middle of the road
without trouble even in slippers, for they had
learned how to put their feet down and lift them
up without taking in any sand. One man said
that he should be surprised if he found half a
dozen grains of sand in his pumps at night, and
stated, moreover, that the young ladies had a
dexterous way of emptying their shoes at each
step, which it would take a stranger a long time
to learn. The tires of the stage- wheels were
about five inches wide; and the wagon-tires
generally on the Cape are an inch or two wider,
as the sand is an inch or two deeper than else-
where. I saw a baby's wagon with tires six
inches wide to keep it near the surface. The
more tired the wheels, the less tired the horses.
Yet all the time that we were in Provincetown,
which was two days and nights, we saw only one
horse and cart, and they were conveying a coffin.
They did not try such experiments there on

PROVINCETOWN 259

common occasions. The next summer I saw
only the two-wheeled horse-cart which conveyed
me thirty rods into the harbor on my way to the
steamer. Yet we read that there were two horses
and two yoke of oxen here in 1791, and we were
told that there were several more when we were
there, beside the stage team. In Barber's His-
torical Collections, it is said, '*So rarely are wheel-
carriages seen in the place that they are a matter
of some curiosity to the younger part of the com-
munity. A lad who understood navigating the
ocean much better than land travel, on seeing a
man driving a wagon in the street, expressed his
surprise at his being able to drive so straight
without the assistance of a rudder." There was
no rattle of carts, and there would have been no
rattle if there had been any carts. Some saddle-
horses that passed the hotel in the evening merely
made the sand fly with a rustling sound like a
writer sanding his paper copiously, but there
was no sound of their tread. No doubt there are
more horses and carts there at present, A sleigh
is never seen, or at least is a great novelty on the
Cape, the snow being either absorbed by the
sand or blown into drifts.

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape gen-
erally do not complain of their "soil," but will
tell you that it is good enough for them to dry
their fish on.

Notwithstanding all this sand, we counted

^260 CAPE COD

three meeting-houses, and four school-house^!
nearly as larcje. on this street, thouirh some had a
tight board fence about them to preserve the
plot within level and hard. Similar fences, even
within a foot of many of the houses, gave the
town a less cheerful and hospitable appearance
than it would otherwise have had. Thev told us
that, on the whole, the sand had made no prog-
ress for the last ten years, the cows being no
louijer permitted to jjo at laro^e. and everv means
being taken to stop the sandy tide.

In 17 "^7 P^o^•inceto\^^l was "invested with pe-
culiar privileges." for its encouragement. Once
or twice it was nearly abandoned ; but now lots
on the street fetch a high price, though titles
to them were hrst obtained by possession and
improvement, and they are still transferred by
quitclaim deeds merely, the township being the
property of the State. But though lots were so
valuable on the street, you might in many places
throw a stone over them to where a man could
still obtain land, or sand, by squatting on or im-
pro\'ing it.

Stones are ver^- rare on the Cape. I saw a very
few small stones used for pavements and for
bank walls, in one or two places in my walk, but
thev are so scarce that, as I was informed, ves-
sels have been forbidden to take them from the
beach for ballast, and therefore their crews used
to land at niirht and steal them. I did not hear

s

<5

PROVINCETOWN 261

of a rod of regular stone wall below Orleans.
Yet I saw one man underpinning a new house
in Eastham with some "rocks," as he called
them, which he said a neighbor had collected with
great pains in the course of years, and finally
made over to him. This I thought was a gift
worthy of being recorded, — equal to a transfer
of California "rocks," almost. Another man
who was assisting him, and who seemed to be a
close observer of nature, hinted to me the locality
of a rock in that neighborhood which was "forty-
two paces in circumference and fifteen feet high,"
for he saw that I was a stranger, and, probably,
would not carry it off. Yet I suspect that the
locality of the few large rocks on the forearm
of the Cape is well known to the inhabitants
generally. I even met with one man who had
got a smattering of mineralogy, but where he
picked it up I could not guess. I thought that
he would meet with some interesting geological
nuts for him to crack, if he should ever visit
the mainland, Cohasset, or Marblehead for
instance.

The well stones at the Highland Light were
brought from Hingham, but the wells and cellars
of the Cape are generally built of brick, which
also are imported. The cellars, as well as the
wells, are made in a circular form, to prevent the
sand from pressing in the wall. The former are
only from nine to twelve feet in diameter, and

26^ C.\PE COD

are said to he ven* cheap, since a sinijle tier oi
brick 'v\-ill suffice for a cellar of even larger dimen-
sions. Of course, if vou live in the sand, vou -w-ill

w m

not require a large cellar to hold your roots. In
Provincetowu. when formerlv thev sutfered the
sand to drive under their houses, obhterating
all rudiments of a cellar, they did not raise a
vegetable to put into one. One farmer in Well-
fleet, who raised fifty bushels of potatoes, showed
me his cellar under a corner of his house, not
more than nine feet in diameter, looking Uke a
cistern : but he had another of the same size
under his barn.

You need dig only a few feet almost anywhere
near the shore of the Cape to tind fresh water.
But that which we tasted was invariably poor.
though the inliabitants called it good, as if they
were comparing it with salt water. In the ac-
count of Truro, it is said. "Wells dug near the
shore are dry at low water, or rather at what is
called young flood, but are replenished with
the flo"v%-ing of the tide," — - the salt water, which
is lowest in the sand, apparently forcing the
fresh up. When you express your surprise at the
greenness of a Pro\'incetown garden on the beach,
in a drs" season, thev will sometimes tell vou that
the tide forces the moisture up to th:m. It is an
interesting fact that low sand-bars in the midst of
the ocean, periiaps even those which are laid
bare onlv at low tide, are reservoirs of fresh

PROVINCETOWN ii63

water at which the thirsty mariner can supply
himself. They appear, like huge sjionges, to
hold the rain and dew which fall on them, and
which, by capillary attraction, are [)reventcd
from minjrlinii with the surroundiuij brine.

The Harbor of Provincetown — which, as
well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide
expanse of ocean, we overlooked from oiir perch
— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south,
is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is
said that the onlv ice seen in it drifts in sometimes
from Barnstable or Plvmouth. Dwig-ht remarks
that "The storms which prevail on the American
coast orenerallv come from the east; and there is
no other harbor on a windward shore within two
hundred miles." J. D. Graham, who has made
a very minute and tliorough survey of this har-
bor and the adjacent waters, states that "its
capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage,
and the complete shelter it affords from all winds,
combine to render it one of the most valuable
ship harbors on our coast." It is ihc harbor of
the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts
generally. It was known to navigators several
years at least before the settlement of Plymouth.
In Captain John Smith's map of New England,
datcvi 1G14. it bears the name of Milford Haven,
and Massachusetts Bav that of Stuard's Bav.
His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name
of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes

264 CAPE COD

have not always power to change a name for the
worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is
**a name which I suppose it will never lose till
shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest
hills."

Many an early voyager was unexpectedly
caught by this hook, and found himself embayed.
On successive maps, Cape Cod appears sprinkled
over with French, Dutch, and English names, as
it made part of New France, New Holland, and
New England. On one map Provincetown Har-
bor is called "Fuic (bownet?) Bay," Barnstable
Bay *'Staten Bay," and the sea north of it "Mare
del Noort," or the North Sea. On another, the
extremity of the Cape is called "Staten Hoeck,"
or the States Hook. On another, by Young, this
has Noord Zee, Staten hoeck or Hit hoeck, but
the copy at Cambridge has no date; the whole
Cape is called "Niew Hollant," (after Hudson) ;
and on another still, the shore between Race
Point and Wood End appears to be called *'Be-
vechier." In Champlain's admirable Map of
New France, including the oldest recognizable
map of what is now the New England coast with
which I am acquainted. Cape Cod is called C.
Blan {i. e. Cape White), from the color of its
sands, and Massachusetts Bay is Baye Blanche.
It was visited by De Monts and Champlain in
1605, and the next year was further explored by
Poitrincourt and Champlain. The latter has

PROVINCETOWN 265

given a particular account of these explorations
in his "Voyages," together with separate charts
and soundings of two of its harbors, — Malh
Barre, the Bad Bar (Nauset Harbor?), a name
now applied to what the French called Caj)
Baturier; and Port Fortune, apparently Chat-
ham Harbor. Both these names are copied on
the map of "Novi Belgii," in Ogilvy's America.
He also describes minutely the manners and cus-
toms of the savages, and represents by a plate
the savages surprising the French and killing
five or six of them. The French afterward killed
some of the natives, and wished, by way of re-
venge, to carry off some and make them grind in
their hand-mill at Port Royal.

It is remarkable that there is not in English
any adequate or correct account of the French
exploration of what is now the coast of New Eng-
land, between 1604 and 1608, though it is con-
ceded that they then made the first permanent
European settlement on the continent of North
America north of St. Augustine. If the lions had
been the painters it would have been otherwise.
This omission is probably to be accounted for
partly by the fact that the early edition of Cham-
plain's "Voyages" had not been consulted for
this purpose. This contains by far the most
particular, and, I think, the most interesting
chapter of what we may call the Ante-Pilgrim
history of New England, extending to one hun-

266 CAPE COD

dred and sixty pages quarto; but appears to be
unknown equally to the historian and the orator
on Plymouth Rock. Bancroft does not mention
Champlain at all among the authorities for De
Monts's expedition, nor does he say that he ever
visited the coast of New England. Though he
bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in
another sense, the leading spirit, as well as the
historian of the expedition. Holmes, Hildreth,
and Barry, and apparently all our historians who
mention Champlain, refer to the edition of 1632,
in which all the separate charts of our harbors,
etc., and about one-half the narrative, are
omitted ; for the author explored so many lands
afterward that he could afford to forget a part of
what he had done. Hildreth, speaking of De
Monts's expedition, says that *'he looked into
the Penobscot [in 1605], which Pring had dis-
covered two years before," saying nothing about
Champlain's extensive exploration of it for De
Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to
Purchas) ; also that he followed in the track of
Pring along the coast "to Cape Cod, which he
called Malabarre." (Haliburton had made the
same statement before him in 1829. He called
it Cap Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar)
was the name given to a harbor on the east side
of the Cape). Pring says nothing about a river
there. Belknap says that Weymouth discovered
it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges, says, in his narration

PROVINCETOWN 267

(Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. II., p. 19), 1658, that
Pring in 1606 "made a perfect discovery of all
the rivers and harbors." This is the most I can
find. Bancroft makes Champlain to have dis-
covered more western rivers in Maine, not
naming the Penobscot ; he, however, must have
been the discoverer of distances on this river
(see Belknap, p. 147). Pring was absent from
England only about six months, and sailed
by this part of Cape Cod (Malabarre) be-
cause it yielded no sassafras, while the French,
who probably had not heard of Pring, were
patiently for years exploring the coast in search
of a place of settlement, sounding and survey-
ing its harbors.

John Smith's map, published in 1616, from
observations in 1614-15, is by many regarded as
the oldest map of New England. It is the first
that was made after this country was called New
England, for he so called it ; but in Champlain's
"Voyages," edition 1613 (and Lescarbot, in
1612, quotes a still earlier account of his voyage),
there is a map of it made when it was known to
Christendom as New France, called Carte Geo-
graphique de la Nouvelle Franse faictte par le
Sieur de Champlain Saint Tongois Cappitaine
ordinaire pour le roi en la Marine^ — faict Ven
1612, from his observations between 1604 and
1607; a map extending from Labrador to Cape
Cod and westward to the Great Lakes, and

268 CAPE COD

crowded with information, geographical, ethno-
graphical, zoological, and botanical. He even
gives the variation of the compass as observed by
himself at that date on many parts of the coast.
This, taken together with the many separate
charts of harbors and their soundings on a large
scale, which this volume contains, — among the
rest. Qui ni be quy (Kennebec), Chouacoit R.
(Saco R.), Le Beau port, Port St. Louis (near
Cape Ann) , and others on our coast, — but
which are not in the edition of 1632, makes this a
completer map of the New England and adja-
cent northern coast than was made for half a
century afterward, almost, we might be allowed
to say, till another Frenchman, Des Barres, made
another for us, which only our late Coast Survey
has superseded. Most of the maps of this coast
made for a long time after betray their indebted-
ness to Champlain. He was a skilful navigator,
a man of science, and geographer to the King of
France. He crossed the Atlantic about twenty
times, and made nothing of it; often in a small
vessel in which few would dare to go to sea to-
day; and on one occasion making the yoyage
from Tadoussac to St. Malo in eighteen days.
He was in this neighborhood, that is, between
Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod, observ-
ing the land and its inhabitants, and making a
map of the coast, from May, 1604, to September,
1607, or about three and a half years, and he has

PROVINCETOWN 269

described minutely his method of surveying har-
bors. By his own account, a part of his map
was engraved in 1604 ( ?) . When Pont-Grave and
others returned to France in 1606, he remained
at Port Royal with Poitrincourt, "in order,"
says he, "by the aid of God, to finish the chart
of the coasts which I had begun" ; and again in
his volume, printed before John Smith visited
this part of America, he says: "It seems to me
that I have done my duty as far as I could, if I
have not forgotten to put in my said chart what-
ever I saw, and give a particular knowledge to
the public of what had never been described nor
discovered so particularly as I have done it, al-
though some other may have heretofore written
of it ; but it was a very small affair in comparison
with what we have discovered within the last
ten years."

It is not generally remembered, if known, by
the descendants of the Pilgrims, that when their
forefathers were spending their first memorable
winter in the New World, they had for neighbors
a colony of French no further off than Port Royal
(Annapolis, Nova Scotia), three hundred miles
distant (Prince seems to make it about five hun-
dred miles) ; where, in spite of many vicissitudes,
they had been for fifteen years. They built a
grist-mill there as early as 1606; also made
bricks and turpentine on a stream, Williamson
says, in 1606. De Monts, who was a Protestant,

270 CAPE COD

brought his minister with him, who came to
blows with the Catholic priest on the subject of
reHeion. Though these founders of Acadie en-
dured no less than the Pilgrims, and about the
same proportion of them — thirty-five out of
seventy-nine (Williamson's Maine says thirty-
six out of seventv) — died the first winter at St.
Croix, 1604-5, sixteen years earlier, no orator,
to my knowledge, has ever celebrated their enter-
prise (Williamson's History^ of Maine does con-
siderably) , while the trials which their successors
and descendants endured at the hands of the
Ensflish have furnished a theme for both the his-
torian and poet. (See Bancroft's History and
Longfellow's Evangeline.) The remains at their
fort at St. Croix were discovered at the end of the
last century, and helped decide where the true
St. Croix, our boundary, was.

The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are
probably older than the oldest English monu-
ment in New England north of the Elizabeth
Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England,
for if there are any traces of Gosnold's store-
house left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft
says, advisedly, in 1834, "It requires a believ-
ing eye to discern the ruins of the fort"; and
that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr.
Charles T. Jackson tells me that, in the course
of a o-eological survev in 18'27, he discovered
a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat

PROVINCETOWN 271

Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in
Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat-of-arms
and the date 1606, which is fourteen years
earlier than the landing of the Pilgrims. This
was left in the possession of Judge Haliburton,
of Nova Scotia.

There were Jesuit priests in what has since
been called New England, converting the savages
at Mount Desert, then St. Savior, in 1613, —
having come over to Port Roval in 1611, though
they were almost immediately interrupted by the
English, years before the Pilgrims came liither
to enjoy their own religion. This according to
Champlain. Charlevoix says the same; and
after coming from France in 1611, went west
from Port Roval along the coast as far as the
Kennebec in 161'-2, and was often carried from
Port Roval to Mount Desert.

Indeed, the Englishman's liistory of Neiv Eng-
land commences onlv when it ceases to be New
France. Though Cabot was the first to discover
the continent of North America, Champlain, in
the edition of his "Voyages" printed in 163!^,
after the English had for a season got possession
of Quebec and Port Royal, complains with no
little justice: "The common consent of all
Europe is to represent New France as extending
at least to the thirtv-fifth and thirtv-sixth degrees
of latitude, as appears by the maps of the world
printed in Spain, Italy, Holland, Flanders, Ger-

272 CAPE COD

many, and England, until they possessed them-
selves of the coasts of New France, where are
Acadie, the Etchemins (Maine and New Bruns-
wick) , the Almouchicois (Massachusetts ?) , and
the Great River St. Lawrence, where they have
imposed, according to their fancy, such names
as New England, Scotland, and others ; but it is
not easy to efface the memory of a thing which is
known to all Christendom."

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabit-
able shore of Labrador, gave the English no just
title to New England, or to the United States,
generally, any more than to Patagonia. His care-
ful biographer (Biddle) is not certain in what
voyage he ran down the coast of the United States
as is reported, and no one tells us what he saw.
Miller, in the New York Hist. Coll., Vol. I., p.
28, says he does not appear to have landed any-
where. Contrast with this Verrazzani's tarrying
fifteen days at one place on the New England
coast, and making frequent excursions into the
interior thence. It chances that the latter's
letter to Francis I., in 1524, contains "the ear-
liest original account extant of the Atlantic coast
of the United States"; and even from that time
the northern part of it began to be called La
Terra Francese, or French Land. A part of it
was called New Holland before it was called
New England. The English were very back-
ward to explore and settle the continent which

PROVINCETOWN 273

they had stumbled upon. The French preceded
them both in their attempts to colonize the con-
tinent of North America (Carolina and Florida,
1562-4), and in their first permanent settlement
(Port Royal, 1605) ; and the right of possession,
naturally enough, was the one which England
mainly respected and recognized in the case of
Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the
time of Henry VII.

The explorations of the French gave to the
world the first valuable maps of these coasts.
Denys of Honfleur made a map of the Gulf of
St. Lawrence in 1506. No sooner had Cartier
explored the St. Lawrence, in 1535, than there
began to be published by his countrymen remark-
ably accurate charts of that river as far up as
Montreal. It is almost all of the continent north
of Florida that you recognize on charts for more
than a generation afterward, — though Verraz-
zani's rude plot (made under French auspices)
was regarded by Hackluyt, more than fifty years
after his voyage (in 1524), as the most accurate
representation of our coast. The French trail is
distinct. They went measuring and sounding,
and when they got home had something to show
for their voyages and explorations. There was
no danger of their charts being lost, as Cabot's
have been.

The most distinguished navigators of that day
were Italians, or of Italian descent, and Portu-

18

274 CAPE COD

guese. The French and Spaniards, though less
advanced in the science of navigation than the
former, possessed more imagination and spirit of
adventure than the English, and were better
fitted to be the explorers of a new continent even
as late as 1751.

This spirit it was which so early carried the
French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi
on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river
on the south. It was long before our frontiers
reached their settlements in the west, and a voya-
geur or coureur de hois is still our conductor there.
Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is a Spanish
one. Augustine in Florida, and Santa Fe in
New Mexico [1582], both built by the Spaniards,
are considered the oldest towns in the United
States. Within the memory of the oldest man,
the Anglo-Americans were confined between the
Appalachian Mountains and the sea, "a space not
two hundred miles broad," while the Mississippi
was by treaty the eastern boundary of New
France. (See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio,
London, 1763, bound up with the travels of Sir
John Bartram.) So far as inland discovery was
concerned, the adventurous spirit of the Eng-
lish was that of sailors who land but for a day,
and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.
Cabot spoke like an Englishman, as he was, if
he said, as one reports, in reference to the dis-
covery of the American Continent, when he

PROVINCETOWN 275

found it running toward the north, that it was a
great disappointment to him, being in his way to
India ; but we would rather add to than detract
from the fame of so great a discoverer.

Samuel Penhallow, in his history (Boston,
1726), p. 51, speaking of "Port Royal and Nova
Scotia," says of the last that its "first seizure
was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the crown of
Great Britain, in the reign of King Henry VII. ;
but lay dormant till the year 1621," when Sir
William Alexander got a patent of it, and pos-
sessed it some years; and afterward Sir David
Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, "to the
surprise of all thinking men, it was given up
unto the French."

Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the
first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who
was not the most likely to be misinformed, who,
moreover, has the fame, at least, of having dis-
covered Wachusett Mountain (discerned it forty
miles inland), talking about the "Great Lake"
and the "hideous swamps about it," near which
the Connecticut and the "Potomack" took their
rise; and among the memorable events of the
year 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irish-
man's expedition to the "White hill," from whose
top he saw eastward what he "judged to be the
Gulf of Canada," and westward what he "judged
to be the great lake which Canada River comes
out of," and where he found much "Muscovy

276 CAPE COD

glass," and "could rive out pieces of forty feet
long and seven or eight broad." While the
very inhabitants of New England were thus
fabling about the country a hundred miles in-
land, which was a terra incognita to them, — or
rather many years before the earliest date re-
ferred to, — Champlain, the jirst Governor of
Canada, not to mention the inland discoveries of
Cartier,^ Roberval, and others, of the preceding
century, and his own earlier voyage, had already
gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest
forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and
wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of
New England. In Champlain's "Voyages,"
printed in 1613, there is a plate representing a
fight in which he aided the Canada Indians
against the Iroquois, near the south end of Lake
Champlain, in July, 1609, eleven years before
the settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he
joined the Algonquins in an expedition against
the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest
of New York. This is that "Great Lake," which
the English, hearing some rumor of from

^ It is remarkable that the first, if not the only, part of New
England which Cartier saw was Vermont (he also saw the moun-
tains of New York), from Montreal Mountain, in 1535, sixty-
seven years before Gosnold saw Cape Cod. 7/ seeing is discov-
ering, — and that is all that it is proved that Cabot knew of the
coast of the United States, — then Cartier (to omit Verrazani and
Gomez) was the discoverer of New England rather than Gosnold,
who is commonly so styled.

PROVINCETOWN 277

the French, long after, locate in an ''Imaginary
Province called Laconia, and spent several years
about 1630 in the vain attempt to discover.'*
(Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll.,
Vol. II., p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter
on this "Great Lake." In the edition of Cham-
plain's map dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara
appear; and in a great lake northwest of Mer
Douce (Lake Huron) there is an island repre-
sented, over which is written, ^^Isle ou il y a une
mine de cuivre,'* — "Island where there is a
mine of copper." This will do for an offset to
our Governor's "Muscovy Glass." Of all these
adventures and discoveries we have a minute
and faithful account, giving facts and dates as
well as charts and soundings, all scientific and
Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable or trav-
eller's story.

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans
long before the seventeenth century. It may be
that Cabot himself beheld it. Verrazzani, in
1524, according to his own account, spent fifteen
days on our coast, in latitude 41° 40' (some sup-
pose in the harbor of Newport), and often went
five or six leagues into the interior there, and he
says that he sailed thence at once one hundred
and fifty leagues northeasterly, always in sight of
the coast. There is a chart in Hackluyt's "Divers
Voyages," made according to Verrazzani's plot,
which last is praised for its accuracy by Hackluyt,

278 CAPE COD

but I cannot distinguish Cape Cod on it, unless
it is the "C. Arenas," which is in the right lati-
tude, though ten degrees west of "Claudia,"
which is thought to be Block Island.

The "Biographic Universelle " informs us
that *'An ancient manuscript chart drawn in
1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmographer,
has preserved the memory of the voyage of
Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by Charles the
Fifth]. One reads in it under {au dessous) the
place occupied by the States of New York, Con-
necticut, and Rhode Island, Terre d'Etienne
Gomez, qu'il decouvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne
Gomez, which he discovered in 1525)." This
chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar
in the last century.

Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot in Canada in
1642, one of the most skilful navigators of his
time, and who has given remarkably minute and
accurate direction for sailing up the St. Law-
rence, showing that he knows what he is talking
about, says in his ''Routier'' (it is in Hackluyt),
"I have been at a bay as far as the forty-second
degree, between Norimbegue [the Penobscot.^]
and Florida, but I have not explored the bottom
of it, and I do not know whether it passes from
one land to the other," i. e. to Asia. (" J'ai ete a
une Baye jusques par les 42^ degres entre la
Norimbegue et la Floride; mais je n'en ai pas
cherche le fond, et ne S9ais pas si elle passe d'une

PROVINCETOWN 279

terre a I'autre.") This may refer to Massachu-
setts Bay, if not possibly to the western inclina-
tion of the coast a little farther south. When he
says, *'I have no doubt that the Norimbegue
enters into the river of Canada," he is per-
haps so interpreting some account which the
Indians had given respecting the route from the
St. Lawrence to the Atlantic by the St. John,
or Penobscot, or possibly even the Hudson
River.

We hear rumors of this country of "Norum-
bega" and its great city from many quarters. In
a discourse by a great French sea-captain in
Ramusio's third volume {1556-65), this is said to
be the name given to the land by its inhabitants,
and Verrazzani is called the discoverer of it;
another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the
river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island
on an accompanying chart. It is frequently
spoken of by old writers as a country of indefi-
nite extent, between Canada and Florida, and
it appears as a large island with Cape Breton at
its eastern extremity, on the map made accord-
ing to Verrazzani's plot in Hackluyt's "Divers
Voyages." These maps and rumors may have
been the origin of the notion, common among
the early settlers, that New England was an
island. The country and city of Norumbega
appear about where Maine now is on a map in
Ortelius ("Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," Ant-

280 CAPE COD

werp, 1570), and the "R. Grande" is drawn
where the Penobscot or St. John might be.

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur
de Monts to explore the coast of Norumbegue,
sailed up the Penobscot twenty-two or twenty-
three leagues from "Isle Haute," or till he was
stopped by the falls. He says : "I think that this
river is that which many pilots and historians call
Norumbegue, and which the greater part have
described as great and spacious, with numerous
islands; and its entrance in the forty-third or
forty-third and one half or, according to others,
the forty-fourth degree of latitude, more or less."
He is convinced that "the greater part" of those
who speak of a great city there have never seen it,
but repeat a mere rumor, but he thinks that some
have seen the mouth of the river since it answers
to their description.

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes : "Three
or four leagues north of the Cap de Poitrincourt
[near the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova
Scotia] we found a cross, which was very old,
covered with moss and almost all decayed, which
was an evident sign that there had formerly been
Christians there."

Also the following passage from Lescarbot will
show how much the neighboring coasts were fre-
quented by Europeans in the sixteenth century.
Speaking of his return from Port Royal to France
in 1607, he says : "At last, within four leagues of

PROVINCETOWN 281

Campseau [the Gut of Canso], we arrived at a
harbor [in Nova Scotia], where a worthy old gen-
tleman from St. John de Lus, named Captain
Savale, was fishing, who received us with the
utmost courtesy. And as this harbor, which is
small, but very good, has no name, I have given
it on my geographical chart the name of Savalet.
[It is on Champlain's map also.] This worthy
man told us that this voyage was the forty-second
which he had made to those parts, and yet the
Newfoundlanders [Terre neuviers] make only
one a year. He was wonderfully content with his
fishery, and informed us that he made daily fifty
crowns' worth of cod, and that his voyage would
be worth ten thousand francs. He had sixteen
men in his employ ; and his vessel was of eighty
tons, which could carry a hundred thousand dry
cod." (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612.)
They dried their fish on the rocks on shore.

The "Isola della Rena" (Sable Island .?) ap-
pears on the chart of *'Nuova Francia" and
Norumbega, accompanying the "Discourse"
above referred to in Ramusio's third volume, edi-
tion 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there being
at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, "grass pastured by
oxen (hceujs) and cows which the Portuguese car-
ried there more than sixty years ago," i. e. sixty
years before 1613; in a later edition he says,
which came out of a Spanish vessel which was
lost in endeavoring to settle on the Isle of Sable ;

282 CAPE COD

and he states that De la Roche's men, who were
left on this island seven years from 1598, lived
on the flesh of these cattle which they found "en
quantie," and built houses out of the wrecks of
vessels which came to the island ("perhaps Gil-
bert's"), there being no wood or stone. Les-
carbot says that they lived "on fish and the milk
of cows left there about eighty years before by
Baron de Leri and Saint Just." Charlevoix
says they ate up the cattle and then lived on fish.
Haliburton speaks of cattle left there as a rumor.
De Leri and Saint Just had suggested plans of
colonization on the Isle of Sable as early as 1515
(1508 ?) according to Bancroft, referring to Char-
levoix. These are but a few of the instances
which I might quote.

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been dis-
covered in 1602. We will consider at length
under what circumstances, and with what obser-
vation and expectations, the first Englishmen
whom history clearly discerns approached the
coast of New England. According to the ac-
counts of Archer and Brereton (both of whom
accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of March,
1602, old style. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold
set sail from Falmouth, England, for the North
part of Virginia, in a small bark called the Con-
cord, they being in all, says one account, "thirty-
two persons, whereof eight mariners and sailors,
twelve purposing upon the discovery to return

PROVINCETOWN 283

with the ship for England, the rest remain there
for population." This is regarded as "the first
attempt of the English to make a settlement
within the limits of New England." Pursuing a
new and a shorter course than the usual one by
the Canaries, "the 14th of April following" they
had sight of Saint Mary's, an island of the
Azores. As their sailors were few and "none
of the best " (I use their own phrases), and they
were "going upon an unknown coast," they were
not "overbold to stand in with the shore but in
open weather"; so they made their first dis-
covery of land with the lead. The 23d of April
the ocean appeared yellow, but on taking up
some of the water in a bucket, "it altered not
either in color or taste from the sea azure." The
7th of May they saw divers birds whose names
they knew, and many others in their "English
tongue of no name." The 8th of May "the
water changed to a yellowish green, where at
seventy fathoms" they "had ground." The
9th, they had upon their lead "many glittering
stones," — "which might promise some mineral
matter in the bottom." The 10th, they were over
a bank which they thought to be near the western
end of St. John's Island, and saw schools of fish.
The 12th, they say, "continually passed fleeting
by us sea-oare, which seemed to have their mov-
able course towards the northeast." On the
13th, they observed "great beds of weeds, much

284 CAPE COD

wood, and divers things else floating by," and
"had smelling of the shore much as from the
southern Cape and Andalusia in Spain." On
Friday, the 14th, early in the morning they de-
scried land on the north, in the latitude of forty-
three degrees, apparently some part of the coast
of Maine. Williamson (History of Maine) says
it certainly could not have been south of the cen-
tral Isle of Shoals. Belknap inclines to think it
the south side of Cape Ann. Standing fair along
by the shore, about twelve o'clock the same day,
they came to anchor and were visited by eight
savages, who came off to them "in a Biscay
shallop, with sail and oars," — "an iron grapple,
and a kettle of copper." These they at first mis-
took for "Christians distressed." One of them
was "apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches
of black serge, made after our sea-fashion, hoes
and shoes on his feet; all the rest (saving one
that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were
naked." They appeared to have had dealings
with "some Basques of St. John de Luz, and to
understand much more than we," say the Eng-
lish, "for want of language, could comprehend."
But they soon "set sail westward, leaving them
and their coast." (This was a remarkable dis-
covery for discoverers.)

"The 15th day," writes Gabriel Archer, "we
had again sight of the land, which made ahead,
being as we thought an island, by reason of a

PROVINCETOWN 285

large sound that appeared westward between it
and the main, for coming to the west end thereof,
we did perceive a large opening, we called it
Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to anchor
in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of
cod-fish, for which we altered the name and
called it Cape Cod. Here we saw skulls of her-
ring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great
abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but with-
out danger; also we came to anchor again in
sixteen fathoms, fair by the land in the latitude
of forty-two degrees. This Cape is well near a
mile broad, and lieth northeast by east. The
captain went here ashore, and found the ground
to be full of peas, strawberries, whortleberries,
etc., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore
somewhat deep ; the firewood there by us taken
in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel, and beach.
A young Indian came here to the captain, armed
with his bow and arrows, and had certain plates
of copper hanging at his ears ; he showed a wil-
lingness to help us in our occasions."

"The 16th we trended the coast southerly,
which was all champaign and full of grass, but
the islands somewhat woody."

Or, according to the account of John Brere-
ton, "riding here," that is, where they first com-
municated with the natives, "in no very good
harbor, and withal doubting the weather, about
three of the clock the same day in the afternoon

286 CAPE COD

we weighed, and standing southerly off into sea
the rest of that day and the night following, with
a fresh gale of wind, in the morning we found
ourselves embayed with a mighty headland ; but
coming to an anchor about nine of the clock the
same day, within a league of the shore, we
hoisted out the one half of our shallop, and Cap-
tain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and three
others, went ashore, being a white sandy and
very bold shore; and marching all that after-
noon with our muskets on our necks, on the
highest hills which we saw (the weather very
hot), at length we perceived this headland to be
parcel of the main, and sundry islands lying
almost round about it; so returning towards
evening to our shallop (for by that time the other
part was brought ashore and set together), we
espied an Indian, a young man of proper stature,
and of a pleasing countenance, and after some
familiarity with him, we left him at the sea side,
and returned to our ship, where in five or six
hours' absence we had pestered our ship so with
codfish, that we threw numbers of them over-
board again ; and surely I am persuaded that in
the months of March, April, and May, there is
upon this coast better fishing, and in as great
plenty, as in Newfoundland; for the skulls of
mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that we
daily saw as we went and came from the shore,
were wonderful," etc.

PROVINCETOWN 287

<<-

From this place we sailed round about this
headland, almost all the points of the compass,
the shore very bold ; but as no coast is free from
dangers, so I am persuaded this is as free as any.
The land somewhat low, full of goodly woods,
but in some places plain."

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape
they landed. If it was inside, as would appear
from Brereton's words, "From this place we
sailed round about this headland almost all the
points of the compass," it must have been on the
western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet. To
one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along the
Cape, the only "white, sandy, and very bold
shore" that appears is in these towns, though
the bank is not so high there as on the eastern
side. At a distance of four or five miles the sandy
cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow sand-
stone, they are so level and regular, especially in
Wellfleet, — the fort of the land defending itself
against the encroachments of the Ocean. They
are streaked here and there with a reddish sand
as if painted. Farther south the shore is more
flat, and less obviously and abruptly sandy, and
a little tinge of green here and there in the
marshes appears to the sailor like a rare and pre-
cious emerald. But in the Journal of Pring's
Voyage the next year (and Salterne, who was
with Pring, had accompanied Gosnold) it is said,
" Departing hence [i. e. from Savage Rocks] we

288 CAPE COD

bore unto that great gulf which Captain Gosnold
overshot the year before." ^

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the
southeasterly extremity "Point Cave," till they
came to an island which they named Martha's
Vineyard (now called No Man's Land), and an-
other on which they dwelt awhile, which they
named Elizabeth's Island, in honor of the Queen,
one of the group since so called, now known by
its Indian name Cuttyhunk. There they built a
small storehouse, the first house built by the
English in New England, whose cellar could re-
cently still be seen, made partly of stones taken
from the beach. Bancroft says (edition of 1837),
the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned.
They who were to have remained becoming dis-
contented, all together set sail for England with a
load of sassafras and other commodities, on the
18th of June following.

The next year came Martin Pring, looking for
sassafras, and thereafter they began to come
thick and fast, until long after sassafras had lost
its reputation.

These are the oldest acounts which we have of

* "Savage Rock," which some have supposed to be, from the
name, the Salvages, a ledge about two miles off Rockland, Cape
Ann, was probably the Nubble, a large, high rock near the shore,
on the east side of York Harbor, Maine. The first land made by
Gosnold is presumed by experienced navigators to be Cape Eliz-
abeth, on the same coast. (See Babson's History of Gloucester,
Massachusetts.)

PROVINCETOWN 289

Cape Cod, unless, perchance. Cape Cod is, as
some suppose, the same with that "Kial-ar-nes"
or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old Ice-
landic manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric the
Red, after sailing many days southwest from
Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004 ; and
where, according to another, in some respects
less trustworthy manuscript, Thor-finn Karlse-
fue ("that is, one who promises or is destined to
be an able or great man" ; he is said to have had
a son born in New. England, from whom Thor-
waldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing
past, in the year 1007, with his wife Gudrida,
Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne Grinolfson, and
Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished Norsemen,
in three ships containing *'one hundred and sixty
men and all sorts of live stock" (probably the
first Norway rats among the rest), having the
land *'on the right side" of them, "roved ashore,"
and found ''Or-cefi (trackless deserts)," and
'*Strand-ir lang-ar ok sand-ar (long narrow
beaches and sand-hills)," and "called the shores
Furdustrand-ir (Wonder-Strands), because the
sailing by them seemed long."

According to the Icelandic manuscripts, Thor-
wald was the first, then, — unless possibly one
Biarne Heriulfson (i. e. son of Heriulf) who had
been seized with a great desire to travel, sailing
from Iceland to Greenland in the year 986 to
join his father who had migrated thither, for he

19

290 CAPE COD

had resolved, says the manuscript, "to spend the
following winter, like all the preceding ones, with
his father," — being driven far to the southwest
by a storm, when it cleared up saw the low land
of Cape Cod looming faintly in the distance;
but this not answering to the description of
Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing
northward along the coast, at length reached
Greenland and his father. At any rate, he may
put forth a strong claim to be regarded as the
discoverer of the American continent.

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose
younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed
it without chart or compass, and they are said to
have been "the first who learned the art of sail-
ing on a wind." Moreover, they had a habit of
casting their door-posts overboard and settling
wherever they went ashore. But as Biarne, and
Thorwald, and Thorfinn have not mentioned the
latitude and longitude distinctly enough, though
we have great respect for them as skilful and
adventurous navigators, we must for the present
remain in doubt as to what capes they did see.
We think that they were considerably further
north.

If time and space permitted, I could present
the claims of other several worthy persons. Les-
carbot, in 1609, asserts that the French sailors
had been accustomed to frequent the Newfound-
land Banks from time immemorial, "for the cod-

PROVINCETOWN 291

fish with which they feed almost all Europe
and supply all sea-going vessels," and accord-
ingly "the language of the nearest lands is half
Basque"; and he quotes Postel, a learned but
extravagant French author, born in 1510, only
six years after the Basques, Bretons, and Nor-
mans are said to have discovered the Grand
Bank and adjacent islands, as saying, in his
Charte Geographiquey which we have not seen:
"Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utili-
tatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri
solita, et ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari
solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus inculta et
vasta, spreta est." "This land, on account of its
very lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be
visited by the Gauls from the very dawn of his-
tory, and more than sixteen hundred years ago
was accustomed to be frequented; but because
it was unadorned with cities, and waste, it was
despised."

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered the
mine, but I discovered it to the world. And now
Bob Smith is putting in his claim.

But let us not laugh at Postel and his visions.
He was perhaps better posted up than we ; and
if he does seem to draw the long bow, it may be
because he had a long way to shoot, — quite
across the Atlantic, If America was found and
lost again once, as most of us believe, then why
not twice .^^ especially as there were likely to be

292 CAPE COD

so few records of an earlier discovery. Consider
what stuff history is made of, — that for the most
part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity.
Who will tell us even how many Russians were
engaged in the battle of the Chernaya, the other
day ? Yet no doubt, Mr. Scriblerus, the histo-
rian, will fix on a definite number for the school-
boys to commit to their excellent memories.
What, then, of the number of Persians at Sala-
mis ? The historian whom I read knew as much
about the position of the parties and their tactics
in the last-mentioned affair, as they who de-
scribe a recent battle in an article for the press
now-a-days, before the particulars have arrived.
I believe that, if I were to live the life of man-
kind over again myself (which I would not be
hired to do), with the Universal History in my
hands, I should not be able to tell what was
what.

Earlier than the date Postel refers to, at any
rate. Cape Cod lay in utter darkness to the civ-
ilized world, though even then the sun rose from
eastward out of the sea every day, and, rolling
over the Cape, went down westward into the
Bay. It was even then Cape and Bay, — ay,
the Cape of Codfish, and the Bay of the Massa-
chusetts, perchance.

Quite recently, on the 11th of November, 1620,
old style, as is well known, the Pilgrims in the
Mayflower came to anchor in Cape Cod harbor.

PROVINCETOWN 293

They had loosed from Plymouth, England, the
6th of September, and, in the words of "Mourts'
Relation," "after many difficulties in boisterous
storms, at length, by God's providence, upon the
9th of November, we espied land, which we
deemed to be Cape Cod, and so afterward it
proved. Upon the 11th of November we came
to anchor in the bay, which is a good harbor and
pleasant bay, circled round except in the en-
trance, which is about four miles over from land
to land, compassed about to the very sea with
oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet
wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of
ships may safely ride. There we relieved our-
selves with wood and water, and refreshed our
people, while our shallop was fitted to coast the
bay, to search for an habitation." There we put
up at Fuller's Hotel, passing by the Pilgrim
House as too high for us (we learned afterward
that we need not have been so particular), and
we refreshed ourselves with hashed fish and
beans, beside taking in a supply of liquids (which
were not intoxicating) , while our legs were refitted
to coast the back-side. Further say the Pilgrims :
"We could not come near the shore by three
quarters of an English mile, because of shallow
water; which was a great prejudice to us; for
our people going on shore were forced to wade a
bow-shot or two in going aland, which caused
many to get colds and coughs ; for it was many

294 CAPE COD

times freezing cold weather." They afterwards
say: "It brought much weakness amongst us";
and no doubt it led to the death of some at
Plymouth.

The harbor of Provincetown is very shallow
near the shore, especially about the head, where
the Pilgrims landed. When I left this place the
next summer, the steamer could not get up to
the wharf, but we were carried out to a large boat
in a cart as much as thirty rods in shallow water,
while a troop of little boys kept us company,
wading around, and thence we pulled to the
steamer by a rope. The harbor being thus shal-
low and sandy about the shore, coasters are ac-
customed to run in here to paint their vessels,
which are left high and dry when the tide goes
down.

It chanced that the Sunday morning that we
were there, I had joined a party of men who were
smoking and lolling over a pile of boards on one
of the wharves (nihil humanum a me, etc.) , when
our landlord, who was a sort of tithing-man,
went off to stop some sailors who were engaged
in painting their vessel. Our party was recruited
from time to time by other citizens, who came
rubbing their eyes as if they had just got out of
bed; and one old man remarked to me that it
was the custom there to lie abed very late on
Sunday, it being a day of rest. I remarked that,
as I thought, they might as well let the men

The day of rest

PROVINCETOWN 295

paint, for all us. It was not noisy work, and
would not disturb our devotions. But a young
man in the company, taking his pipe out of his
mouth, said that it was a plain contradiction of
the law of God, which he quoted, and if they did
not have some such regulation, vessels would run
in there to tar, and rig, and paint, and they would
have no Sabbath at all. This was a good argu-
ment enough, if he had not put it in the name of
religion. The next summer, as I sat on a hill
there one sultry Sunday afternoon the meeting-
house windows being open, my meditations were
interrupted by the noise of a preacher who
shouted like a boatswain, profaning the quiet
atmosphere, and who, I fancied, must have
taken off his coat. Few things could have been
more disgusting or disheartening. I wished the
ti thing-man would stop him.

The Pilgrims say: *' There was the greatest
store of fowl that ever we saw."

We saw no fowl there, except gulls of various
kinds; but the greatest store of them that ever
we saw was on a flat but slightly covered with
water on the east side of the harbor, and we ob-
served a man who had landed there from a boat
creeping along the shore in order to get a shot at
them, but they all rose and flew away in a great
scattering flock, too soon for him, having ap-
parently got their dinners, though he did not get
his.

296 CAPE COD

It is remarkable that the Pilgrims (or their
reporter) describe this part of the Cape, not only
as well wooded, but as having a deep and ex-
cellent soil, and hardly mention the word sand.
Now what strikes the voyager is the barrenness
and desolation of the land. They found "the
ground or earth sand-hills, much like the downs
in Holland, but much better the crust of the
earth, a spit*s depth, excellent black earth." We
found that the earth had lost its crust, — if, in-
deed, it ever had any, — and that there was no
soil to speak of. We did not see enough black
earth in Provincetown to fill a flower-pot, unless
in the swamps. They found it "all wooded with
oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, vines,
some ash, walnut; the wood for the most part
open and without underwood, fit either to go or
ride in." We saw scarcely anything high enough
to be called a tree, except a little low wood at the
east end of the town, and the few ornamental
trees in its yards, — only a few small specimens
of some of the above kinds on the sand-hills in
the rear ; but it was all thick shrubbery, without
any large wood above it, very unfit either to go
or ride in. The greater part of the land was a
perfect desert of yellow sand, rippled like waves
by the wind, in which only a little Beach-grass
grew here and there. They say that, just after
passing the head of East Harbor Creek, the
boughs and bushes "tore" their "very armor in

PROVINCETOWN 297

pieces " (the same thing happened to such armor
as we wore, when out of curiosity we took to the
bushes) ; or they came to deep valleys, "full of
brush, wood-gaile, and long grass," and "found
springs of fresh water."

For the most part we saw neither bough nor
bush, not so much as a shrub to tear our clothes
against if we would, and a sheep would lose none
of its fleece, even if it found herbage enough to
make fleece grow there. We saw rather beach
and poverty-grass, and merely sorrel enough to
color the surface. I suppose, then, by Wood-
gaile they mean the Bay berry.

All accounts agree in affirming that this part
of the Cape was comparatively well wooded a
century ago. But notwithstanding the great
changes which have taken place in these respects,
I cannot but think that we must make some
allowance for the greenness of the Pilgrims in
these matters, which caused them to see green.
We do not believe that the trees were large or
the soil was deep here. Their account may be
true particularly, but it is generally false. They
saw literally, as well as figuratively, but one side
of the Cape. They naturally exaggerated the
fairness and attractiveness of the land, for they
were glad to get to any land at all after that
anxious voyage. Everything appeared to them
of the color of the rose, and had the scent of
juniper and sassafras. Very different is the gen-

298 CAPE COD

eral and off-hand account given by Captain John
Smith, who was on this coast six years earlier,
and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, and
soldier, who had seen too much of the world to
exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on a part of it.
In his "Description of New England," printed
in 1616, after speaking of Accomack, since called
Plymouth, he says: *'Cape Cod is the next pre-
sents itself, which is only a headland of high hills
of sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, hurts
[i. e. whorts, or whortleberries], and such trash,
but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This
Cape is made by the main sea on the one side,,
and a great bay on the other, in form of a sickle."
Champlain had already written, "Which we
named Ca'p Blanc (Cape White), because they
were sands and downs {sables et dunes) which
appeared thus."

When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their re-
porter says again, "The land for the crust of the
earth is a spit's depth," — that would seem to be
their recipe for an earth's crust, — "excellent
black mould and fat in some places." However,
according to Bradford himself, whom some con-
sider the author of part of "Mourt's Relation,"
they who came over in the Fortune the next year
were somewhat daunted when "they came into
the harbor of Cape Cod, and there saw nothing
but a naked and barren place." They soon found
out their mistake with respect to the goodness of

PROVINCETOWN 299

Plymouth soil. Yet when at length, some years
later, when they were fully satisfied of the poor-
ness of the place which they had chosen, "the
greater part," says Bradford, "consented to a
removal to a place called Nausett," they agreed
to remove all together to Nauset, now Eastham,
which was jumping out of the frying-pan into
the fire ; and some of the most respectable of the
inhabitants of Plymouth did actually remove
thither accordingly.

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims pos-
sessed but few of the qualities of the modern
pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the
American backwoodsmen. They did not go at
once into the woods with their axes. They were a
family and church, and were more anxious to
keep together, though it were on the sand, than
to explore and colonize a New World. When
the above-mentioned company removed to East-
ham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use
Bradford's expression, "like an ancient mother
grown old, and forsaken of her children."
Though they landed on Clark's Island in Ply-
mouth harbor, the 9th of December (O. S.), and
the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the
18th they rambled about the mainland, and the
19th decided to settle there, it was the 8th of
January before Francis Billington went with
one of the master's mates to look at the magnifi-
cent pond or lake now called "Billington Sea,"

300 CAPE COD

about two miles distant, which he had discovered
from the top of a tree, and mistook for a great
sea. And the 7th of March "Master Carver
with five others went to the great ponds which
seem to be excellent fishing," both which points
are within the compass of an ordinary after-
noon's ramble, — however wild the country.
It is true they were busy at first about their
building, and were hindered in that by much
foul weather; but a party of emigrants to Cali-
fornia or Oregon, vriih. no less work on their
hands, — and more hostile Indians, — would do
as much exploring the first afternoon, and the
Sieur de Champlain would have sought an in-
terview with the savages, and examined the coun-
try as far as the Connecticut, and made a map of
it, before Billington had climbed his tree. Or
contrast them only with the French searching
for copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603,
tracing up small streams with Indian guides.
Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pioneers and the
ancestors of pioneers, in a far grander enterprise.
By this time we saw the little steamer Nau-
shon entering the harbor, and heard the sound
of her whistle, and came down from the hills to
meet her at the wharf. So we took leave of Cape
Cod and its inhabitants. We liked the manners
of the last, what little we saw of them, very much.
They were particularly downright and good-
humored. The old people appeared remarkably

PROVINCETOWN 301

well preserved, as if by the saltness of the atmos-
phere, and after having onee mistaken, we could
never be certain whether we were talking to a
coeval of our grandparents, or to one of our own
age. They are said to be more purely the de-
scendants of the Pilgrims than the inhabitants
of any other part of the State. We were told
that "sometimes, when the court comes together
at Barnstable, they have not a single criminal to
try, and the jail is shut up." It was "to let"
when we were there. Until quite recently there
was no regular lawyer below Orleans. Who
then will complain of a few regular man-eating
sharks along the back-side?

One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked
what the fishermen did in the winter, answered
that they did nothing but go a-visiting, sit about
and tell stories, — though they worked hard in
summer. Yet it is not a long vacation they get.
I am sorry that I have not been there in the winter
to hear their yarns. Almost every Cape man is
Captain of some craft or other, — every man at
least who is at the head of his own affairs, though
it is not every one that is, for some heads have
the force of Alpha privative, negativing all the
efforts which Nature would fain make through
them. The greater number of men are merely
corporals. It is worth the while to talk with one
whom his neighbors address as Captain, though
his craft may have long been sunk, and he may

302 CAPE COD

be holding by his teeth to the shattered mast of a
pipe alone, and only gets half-seas-over in a
figurative sense, now. He is pretty sure to vindi-
cate his right to the title at last, — can tell one
or two good stories at least.

For the most part we saw only the back-side
of the towns, but our storv is true as far as it
goes. We might have made more of the Bay
side, but we were inclined to open our eyes widest
at the Atlantic. \Ye did not care to see those fea-
tures of the Cape in which it is inferior or merely
equal to the mainland, but only those in which
it is peculiar or superior. We cannot say how
its towns look in front to one who goes to meet
them ; we went to see the ocean behind them.
They were merely the raft on which we stood, and
we took notice of the barnacles which adhered
to it, and some carvings upon it.

Before we left the wharf we made the ac-
quaintance of a passenger whom we had seen at
the hotel. When we asked him which way he
came to Provincetown, he answered that he was
cast ashore at Wood End, Saturday night, in the
same storm in which the 5/. John was wrecked.
He had been at work as a carpenter in Maine,
and took passage for Boston in a schooner laden
with lumber. When the storm came up, they
endeavored to get into Provincetown harbor.
"It was dark and misty,'* said he, "and as we
were steering for Long Point Light we suddenly

PROVINCETOWN 303

saw the land near us, — for our compass was
out of order, — varied several degrees [a mariner
always casts the blame on his compass], — but
there being a mist on shore, we thought it was
farther off than it was, and so held on, and we
immediately struck on the bar. Says the Captain,
*We are all lost.' Says I to the Captain, 'Now
don't let her strike again this way; head her
right on.' The Captain thought a moment, and
then headed her on. The sea washed completely
over us, and wellnigh took the breath out of my
body. I held on to the running rigging, but
I have learned to hold on to the standing rig-
ging the next time," "Well, were there any
drowned.?" I asked. "No; we all got safe to
a house at Wood End, at midnight, wet to our
skins, and half frozen to death." He had ap-
parently spent the time since playing checkers at
the hotel, and was congratulating himself on
having beaten a tall fellow-boarder at that game.
"The vessel is to be sold at auction to-day," he
added. (We had heard the sound of the crier's
bell which advertised it.) "The Captain is
rather down about it, but I tell him to cheer up
and he will soon get another vessel."

At that moment the Captain called to him from
the wharf. He looked like a man just from the
country, with a cap made of a woodchuck's skin,
and now that I had heard a part of his history, he
appeared singularly destitute, — a Captain with-

304 CAPE COD

out any vessel, only a great-coat ! and that per-
haps a borrowed one ! Not even a dog followed
him ; only his title stuck to him. I also saw one
of the crew. They all had caps of the same pat-
tern, and wore a subdued look, in addition to their
naturally aquiline features, as if a breaker — a
*'comber" — had washed over them. As we
passed Wood End, we noticed the pile of lumber
on the shore which had made the cargo of their
vessel.

About Long Point in the summer you com-
monly see them catching lobsters for the New
York market, from small boats just off the shore,
or rather, the lobsters catch themselves, for they
cling to the netting on which the bait is placed of
their own accord, and thus are drawn up. They
sell them fresh for two cents apiece. Man needs
to know but little more than a lobster in order
to catch him in his traps. The mackerel fleet
had been getting to sea, one after another, ever
since midnight, and as we were leaving the Cape
we passed near to many of them under sail, and
got a nearer view than we had had ; — half a
dozen red-shirted men and boys, leaning over
the rail to look at us, the skipper shouting back
the number of barrels he had caught, in answer
to our inquiry. All sailors pause to watch a
steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In
one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on
the rail and stood up as high as any of them, and

A Provincetown fishing-vessel

PROVINCETOWN 305

looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not
wish to be seen no better employed than a dog,
rapped him on the nose and sent him below.
Such is human justice ! I thought I could hear
him making an effective appeal down there from
human to divine justice. He must have had
much the cleanest breast of the two.

Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay,
we saw the white sails of the mackerel fishers
hovering round Cape Cod, and when they were
all hull-down, and the low extremity of the Cape
was also down, their white sails still appeared
on both sides of it, around where it had sunk,
like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the rare
qualities of Cape Cod Harbor. But before the
extremity of the Cape had completely sunk, it
appeared like a filmy sliver of land lying flat on
the ocean, and later still a mere reflection of a
sand-bar on the haze above. Its name suggests
a homely truth, but it would be more poetic if it
described the impression which it makes on the
beholder. Some capes have peculiarly suggestive
names. There is Cape Wrath, the northwest
point of Scotland, for instance; what a good
name for a cape lying far away dark over the
water under a lowering sky !

Mild as it was on shore this morning, the wind
was cold and piercing on the water. Though it
be the hottest day in July on land, and the voyage
is to last but four hours, take your thickest

20

306 CAPE COD

clothes with you, for you are about to float over
melted icebergs. When I left Boston in the
steamboat on the 25th of June the next year, it
was a quite warm day on shore. The passen-
gers were dressed in their thinnest clothes, and
at first sat under their umbrellas, but when we
were fairly out on the Bay, such as had only their
coats were suffering with the cold, and sought
the shelter of the pilot's house and the warmth
of the chimney. But when we approached the
harbor of Provincetown, I was surprised to
perceive what an influence that low and narrow
strip of sand, only a mile or two in width, had over
the temperature of the air for many miles around.
We penetrated into a sultry atmosphere where
our thin coats were once more in fashion, and
found the inhabitants sweltering.

Leaving far on one side Manomet Point in
Plymouth and the Scituate shore, after being out
of sight of land for an hour or two, for it was
rather hazy, we neared the Cohasset Rocks
again at Minot's Ledge, and saw the great
Tupelo-tree on the edge of Scituate, which lifts
its dome, like an umbelliferous plant, high over
the surrounding forest, and is conspicuous for
many miles over land and water. Here was the
new iron light-house, then unfinished, in the
shape of an egg-shell painted red, and placed high
on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea monster
floating on the waves, — destined to be phos-

PROVINCETOWN 307

phorescent. As we passed it at half-tide we saw
the spray tossed up nearly to the shell. A man
was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a
mile from the shore. When I passed it the next
summer it was finished and two men lived in it,
and a light-house keeper said that they told him
that in a recent gale it had rocked so as to shake
the plates off the table. Think of making your
bed thus in the crest of a breaker ! To have the
waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you
always, night and day, and from time to time
making a spring at you, almost sure to have you
at last. And not one of all those voyagers can
come to your relief, — but when your light goes
out, it will be a sign that the Hght of your life
has gone out also. What a place to compose a
work on breakers ! This light-house was the
cynosure of all eyes. Every passenger watched
it for half an hour at least; yet a colored cook
belonging to the boat, whom I had seen come
out of his quarters several times to empty his
dishes over the side with a flourish, chancing to
come out just as we were abreast of this light,
and not more than forty rods from it, and were
all gazing at it, as he drew back his arm, caught
sight of it, and with surprise exclaimed, "What's
that.^" He had been employed on this boat for
a year, and passed this light every weekday, but
as he had never chanced to empty his dishes
just at that point, had never seen it before. To

308 CAPE COD

look at lights was the pilot's business ; he minded
the kitchen fire. It suggested how little some
who voyaged round the world could manage to
see. You would almost as easily believe that
there are men who never yet chanced to come
out at the right time to see the sun. What avails
it though a light be placed on the top of a hill,
if you spend all your life directly under the hill ?
It might as well be under a bushel. This light-
house, as is well known, was swept away in a
storm in April, 1851, and the two men in it, and
the next morning not a vestige of it was to be
seen from the shore.

A Hull man told me that he helped set up a
white-oak pole on Minot's Ledge some years
before. It was fifteen inches in diameter, forty-
one feet high, sunk four feet in the rock, and was
secured by four guys, — but it stood only one
year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near the same
place stood eight years.

When I crossed the Bay in the Melrose in
July, we hugged the Scituate shore as long as
possible, in order to take advantage of the wind.
Far out on the Bay (off this shore) we scared up
a brood of young ducks, probably black ones,
bred hereabouts, which the packet had fre-
quently disturbed in her trips. A townsman,
who was making the voyage for the first time,
walked slowly round into the rear of the helms-
man, when we were in the middle of the Bay,

PROVINCETOWN 309

and looking out over the sea, before he sat down
there, remarked with as much originaHty as was
possible for one who used a borrowed expres-
sion, *'This is a great country." He had been a
timber merchant, and I afterwards saw him
taking the diameter of the mainmast with his
stick, and estimating its height. I returned
from the same excursion in the Olata, a very
handsome and swift-sailing yacht, which left
Provincetown at the same time with two other
packets, the Melrose and Frolic. At first there
was scarcely a breath of air stirring, and we
loitered about Long Point for an hour in com-
pany, — with our heads over the rail watching
the great sand-circles and the fishes at the bot-
tom in calm water fifteen feet deep. But after
clearing the Cape we rigged a flying-jib, and, as
the Captain had prophesied, soon showed our con-
sorts our heels. There was a steamer six or eight
miles northward, near the Cape, towing a large
ship toward Boston. Its smoke stretched per-
fectly horizontal several miles over the sea, and
by a sudden change in its direction, warned us
of a change in the wind before we felt it. The
steamer appeared very far from the ship, and
some young men who had frequently used the
Captain's glass, but did not suspect that the
vessels were connected, expressed surprise that
they kept about the same distance apart for so
many hours. At which the Captain dryly re-

310 CAPE COD

marked, that probably they would never get
any nearer together. As long as the wind held
we kept paee with the steamer, but at length it
died away almost entirely, and the flying-jib
did all the work. When we passed the light-
boat at Minot's Ledge, the Melrose and Frolic
were just visible ten miles astern.

Consider the islands bearing the names of all
the saints, bristling with forts like chestnuts-burs,
or ecJiijiidcc, yet the police will not let a couple
of Irishmen have a private sparring-match on
one of them, as it is a government monopoly ; all
the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and
you must sail prudently between two tiers of
stony knuckles before you come to feel the
warmth of their breasts.

The Bermudas are said to have been discov-
ered by a Spanish ship of that name which was
wrecked on them, "which till then," says Sir
John Smith, "for six thousand years had been
nameless." The English did not stumble upon
them in their first voyages to Virginia; and
the first Englishman who was ever there was
wrecked on them in 1593. Smith says, "No
place known hath better walls nor a broader
ditch." Yet at the very first planting of them
with some sixty persons, in 161''2, the first Gov-
ernor, the same year, "built and laid the founda-
tion of eight or nine forts." To be ready, one
would say, to entertain the first ship's company

PROVINCETOWN 311

that should be next shipwrecked on to them.
It would have been more sensible to have built
as many "Charity-houses." These are the
vexed Bermoothees.

Our great sails caught all the air there was,
and our low and narrow hull caused the least
possible friction. Coming up the harbor against
the stream we swept by everything. Some young
men returning from a fishing excursion came to
the side of their smack, while we were thus stead-
ily drawing by them, and, bowing, observed,
with the best possible grace, "We give it up."
Yet sometimes we were nearly at a standstill.
The sailors watched (two) objects on the shore
to ascertain whether we advanced or receded.
In the harbor it was like the evening of a holiday.
The Eastern steamboat passed us with music
and a cheer, as if they were going to a ball, when
they might be going to Davy's locker.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix's mate
to some girls as we passed that spot. That was
the name of a sailor hung there, he said. — "If
I am guilty, this island will remain ; but if I am
innocent it will be washed away," and now it
is all washed away !

Next (?) came the fort on George's Island.
These are bungling contrivances : not our jorteSy
but our foibles. Wolfe sailed by the strongest
fort in North America in the dark, and took it.

I admired the skill with which the vessel was

312 CAPE COD

at last brought to her place in the dock, near the
end of Long Wharf. It was candle-light, and
my eyes could not distinguish the wharves jut-
ting out towards us, but it appeared like an even
line of shore densely crowded with shipping.
You could not have guessed within a quarter of
a mile of Long Wharf. Nevertheless, we were to
be blown to a crevice amid them, — steering
right into the maze. Down goes the mainsail,
and only the jib draws us along. Now we are
within four rods of the shipping, having already
dodged several outsiders; but it is still only a
maze of spars, and rigging, and hulls, — not a
crack can be seen. Down goes the jib, but still
we advance. The Captain stands aft with one
hand on the tiller, and the other holding his
night-glass, — his son stands on the bowsprit
straining his eyes, — the passengers feel their
hearts halfway to their mouths, expecting a
crash. '* Do you see any room there .^" asks the
Captain, quietly. He must make up his mind
in five seconds, else he will carry away that ves-
sel's bowsprit, or lose his own. "Yes, sir, here
is a place for us"; and in three minutes more
we are fast to the wharf in a little gap between
two bigger vessels.

And now we were in Boston. Whoever has
been down to the end of Long Wharf, and
walked through Quincy Market, has seen Boston.

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston,

PROVINCETOWN 313

New Orleans, and the rest, are the names of
wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by
the shops and dweUings of the merchants), good
places to take in and to discharge a cargo (to land
the products of other climes and load the exports
of our own). I see a great many barrels and
fig-drums, — piles of wood for umbrella-sticks,
— blocks of granite and ice, — great heaps of
goods, and the means of packing and conveying
them, — much wrapping-paper and twine, —
many crates and hogsheads and trucks, — and
that is Boston. The more barrels, the more Bos-
ton. The museums and scientific societies and
libraries are accidental. They gather around the
sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and cus-
tomhouse officers, and broken-down poets, seek-
ing a fortune amid the barrels. Their better or
worse lyceums, and preachings, and doctorings,
these, too, are accidental, and the malls of com-
mons are always small potatoes. When I go to
Boston, I naturally go straight through the city
(taking the Market in my way), down to the
end of Long Wharf, and look off, for I have no
cousins in the back alleys, — and there I see a
great many countrymen in their shirt-sleeves
from Maine, and Pennsylvania, and all along
shore and in shore, and some foreigners beside,
loading and unloading and steering their teams
about, as at a country fair.

When we reached Boston that October, I had

314 CAPE COD

a gill of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at
Concord there was still enough left to sand my
pages for many a day ; and I seemed to hear the
sea roar, as if I lived in a shell, for a week
afterward.

The places which I have described may seem
strange and remote to my townsmen, — indeed,
from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as
from England to France ; yet step into the cars,
and in six hours you may stand on those four
planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said
to have discovered, and which I have so poorly
described. If you had started when I first ad-
vised you, you might have seen our tracks in the
sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way from
the Nauset Lights to Race Point, some thirty
miles, — for at every step we made an impres-
sion on the Cape, though we were not aware of
it, and though our account may have made no
impression on your minds. But what is our
account ? In it there is no roar, no beach-birds,
no tow-cloth.

We often love to think now of the life of men
on beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the
weather is serene ; their sunny lives on the sand,
amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, their
companion a cow, their wealth a jag of drift-
wood or a few beach-plums, and their music the
surf and the peep of the beach-bird.

We went to see the Ocean, and that is probably

PROVINCETOWN 315

the best place of all our coast to go to. If you
go by water, you may experience what it is to
leave and to approach these shores; you may
see the Stormy Petrel by the way, ^aXacro-oS/ao/xa,
running over the sea, and if the weather is but a
little thick, may lose sight of the land in mid-
passage. I do not know where there is another
beach in the Atlantic States, attached to the
mainland, so long, and at the same time so
straight, and completely uninterrupted by creeks
or coves or fresh-water rivers or marshes; for
though there may be clear places on the map,
they would probably be found by the foot trav-
eller to be intersected by creeks and marshes;
certainly there is none where there is a double
way, such as I have described, a beach and a
bank, which at the same time shows you the
land and the sea, and part of the time two seas.
The Great South Beach of Long Island, which
I have since visited, is longer still without an
inlet, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, exposed,
several miles from the Island, and not the edge
of a continent wasting before the assaults of the
Ocean. Though wild and desolate, as it wants
the bold bank, it possesses but half the grandeur
of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the imagination
contented with its southern aspect. The only
other beaches of great length on our Atlantic
coast, which I have heard sailors speak of, are
those of Barnegat on the Jersey shore, and Cur-

316 CAPE COD

rituck between Virginia and North Carolina;
but these, Hke the last, are low and narrow sand-
bars, lying off the coast, and separated from the
mainland by lagoons. Besides, as you go far-
ther south, the tides are feebler, and cease to add
variety and grandeur to the shore. On the Pacific
side of our country also no doubt there is good
walking to be found ; a recent writer and dweller
there tells us that "the coast from Cape Disap-
pointment (or the Columbia River) to Cape
Flattery (at the Strait of Juan de Fuca) is nearly
north and south, and can be travelled almost its
entire length on a beautiful sand-beach," with
the exception of two bays, four or five rivers, and
a few points jutting into the sea. The common
shell-fish found there seem to be often of cor-
responding types, if not identical species, with
those of Cape Cod. The beach which I have
described, however, is not hard enough for car-
riages, but must be explored on foot. When one
carriage has passed along, a following one sinks
deeper still in its rut. It has at present no name
any more than fame. That portion south of
Nauset Harbor is commonly called Chatham
Beach. The part in Eastham is called Nauset
Beach, and off Wellfleet and Truro the Back-
side, or sometimes, perhaps, Cape Cod Beach.
I think that part which extends without interrup-
tion from Nauset Harbor to Race Point should
be called Cape Cod Beach, and do so speak of it.

PROVINCETOWN 317

One of the most attractive points for visitors is
in the northeast part of Wellfleet, where accom-
modations (I mean for men and women of toler-
able health and habits) could probably be had
within half a mile of the sea-shore. It best
combines the country and the seaside. Though
the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest murmur is
audible, and you have only to climb a hill to find
yourself on its brink. It is but a step from the
glassy surface of the Herring Ponds to the big
Atlantic Pond where the waves never cease to
break. Or perhaps the Highland Light in Truro
may compete with this locality, for there, there
is a more uninterrupted view of the Ocean and
the Bay, and in the summer there is always some
air stirring on the edge of the bank there, so that
the inhabitants know not what hot weather is.
As for the view, the keeper of the light, with one
or more of his family, walks out to the edge of
the bank after every meal to look off, just as if
they had not lived there all their days. In short,
it will wear well. And what picture will you sub-
stitute for that, upon your walls.? But ladies
cannot get down the bank there at present with-
out the aid of a block and tackle.

Most persons visit the sea-side in warm
weather, when fogs are frequent, and the at-
mosphere is wont to be thick, and the charm of
the sea is to some extent lost. But I suspect that
the fall is the best season, for then the atmos-

318 CAPE COD

phere is more transparent, and it is a greater
pleasure to look out over the sea. The clear and
bracing air, and the storms of autumn and win-
ter even, are necessary in order that we may
get the impression which the sea is calculated
to make. In October, when the weather is not
intolerably cold, and the landscape wears its
autumnal tints, such as, methinks, only a Cape
Cod landscape ever wears, especially if you have
a storm during your stay, — that I am convinced
is the best time to visit this shore. In autumn,
even in August, the thoughtful days begin, and
we can walk anywhere with profit. Beside, an
outward cold and dreariness, which make it
necessary to seek shelter at night, lend a spirit
of adventure to a walk.

The time must come when this coast will be a
place of resort for those New-Englanders who
really wish to visit the sea-side. At present it is
wholly unknown to the fashionable w^orld, and
probably it will never be agreeable to them. If
it is merely a ten-pin alley, or a circular railway,
or an ocean of mint-julep, that the visitor is in
search of, — if he thinks more of the wine than
the brine, as I suspect some do at Newport, —
I trust that for a lopg time he will be disappointed
here. But this shore will never be more attrac-
tive than it is now. Such beaches as are fash-
ionable are here made and unmade in a day, I
may almost say, by the sea shifting its sands.

PROVINCETOWN 319

Lynn and Nantasket ! this bare and bended arm
it is that makes the bay in which they lie so
snugly. What are springs and waterfalls ? Here
is the spring of springs, the waterfall of water-
falls. A storm in the fall or winter is the time to
visit it; a light-house or a fisherman's hut the
true hotel. A man may stand there and put all
America behind him.

The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.

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